


The Mending of Anastasia Chen

by Dreamcatcher37



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-02-09 12:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamcatcher37/pseuds/Dreamcatcher37
Summary: The Mercado's a liminal space, where time has no meaning and dragonflies crawl the cracks in the foundation.  A secret long buried won't stay buried.  And someone long dead won't stay dead.  The Ghostbusters don't get paid enough to deal with this, honestly.





	1. Chapter 1

"Good evening, and welcome to The Truth Unearthed...your only source of sanity in a 'paranormal' world.  As always, I'm your host, Martin Heiss—and here with me is the returning Alec Melnitz.  Tonight we'll examine the latest of New York's many mysteries.  This one comes to us from the World Wide Web...stay tuned, and stay alert.  This is The Truth Unearthed."

Martin Heiss's show (entering its sixth season) is filmed in a dusky, Ripley-esque office.  Countless spooky curios frame the man himself.  (His co-star sits off to the side.)  Martin talks to the camera in a low voice.  Never without his characteristic hat and cane, his countenance is like a familiar old relative, back from his worldly travels.  That's how Martin captivates his audience.

(Some of his fans call him Uncle Heiss.  A small subculture call him Daddy, but we don't talk about those people.)

This episode is one of Martin Heiss's last—it’s filmed just weeks before his untimely demise.  The theme song plays.  The office fades back in.  Martin Heiss introduces his show.

"Three months ago, a video was leaked from the closed-circuit cameras of the Mercado hotel."  A picture of the facade appears.  "The Internet's full of these 'found footage' viral sensations...and now it looks like the Mercado's the latest victim.  Established in the twenties, it's one of the fanciest joints on 26th.  It's said to have many unexplained deaths attached to it...right, Alec?"

"That's right, and even more unsubstantiated claims.  The amount of urban legends probably DOUBLE the amount of unsolved cases—"

"Yes.  Like any hotel.  This video's spread like wildfire in a very short time.  The Youtube original's got over a million hits.  A modern urban legend, really—and it's easy to see why.  Let's take a look."

The video fades in.  It's grainy, low-quality, and without any sound.  Just an empty elevator...then a blur of dark hair enters, slams into the opposite wall, and cowers in a forward corner.  Her movements are jerky.  Alien.  She comes out of nowhere.  She waits—frozen—for a second, then frantically starts pressing buttons, one hand wound in her hair.

"Nothing captured on any auxiliary cameras alludes to what this girl's running from...or how she got into the hotel."  While the elevator starts its journey up, the show turns back to Martin Heiss.  "While she's been identified by her sister, the guest manifesto never included her name.  None of the staff remember seeing her.  And you'd think someone would remember her, with what she does next."

The mystery woman's pacing.  Practically shaking.  Then she looks up at some sound. Hiding in that forward corner, it's like she's expecting a blow.  The elevator doors slowly open (but the angle of the camera doesn't show the hallway floor).   So, so hesitantly, she examines the outside.  Twitching, motioning, and mumbling to things that aren't there, the girl waits for the doors to close again.  They don't.

The lights flicker, just barely caught by the camera.  The woman looks up; mystified.  It's easy to see her through the grainy camera and think she's unhinged.  It's easy to forget she's a person.

She darts in and out.  Another camera angle catches her looking around an empty hall.  There's nothing there to be afraid of.  But she moves like she's dodging invisible things.  The word on everyone's mind, seeing this display, is "ghosts".

The nameless Asian woman wanders in and out.  It seems none of the buttons work.  Finally, she ventures into the hallway, leaning on a wall.  And she's gone.

A few more shots trace her running—stumbling—stealing through abandoned hallways.  The time stamp reads 3:14 AM—the witching hour.  The video's delegated to a corner of the screen as Martin and his co-star discuss what's happening.

"Some obvious electrical interference there." Alec Melnitz starts.

"It's hard to tell what's really happening—but the thing that's got everybody buzzing is the end here."

With Martin Heiss's voice-over, the video continues, full-frame.

"There..."

The mystery girl's taking off down a series of halls.

"There..."

 It's like she hears someone behind her; blindly, she rounds a corner.

"...Gone."

A few more camera angles are shown.  Other second-floor hallways.  The grand staircase.  The front doors.  They're all silent, they're all still.

The video fades away.

"That's the last time Anastasia Chen was seen alive." Martin says gravely.  "In a police report released by the NYPD, she was positively identified—and no, she had no reason to be there.  According to her family, she'd been missing for quite some time."

"The police failed to solve the mystery?" Alec asks, a scripted question.

"Yes—after a short investigation, no sign of Anastasia Chen was found.  But they DID turn up an interesting fact about the Mercado—"

"What's that, Martin?"

"—Their security system hadn't been updated since the '70s.  There are enough blind spots on those cameras someone could get around totally undetected."

(Martin Heiss forgets to mention most of those ‘blind spots’ were behind doors that could only be opened with a staff card.)

"And the elevator, what's—what happened with that?" Alec asks.

"Well, digging a little deeper into hotel records, it turns out the Mercado had a host of electrical problems all that week.  Starting that night, in fact.  Remember, this is a very old hotel."  Martin addresses the camera again.  "And now, I know what you're all thinking...what about the girl?"

Nán, actually nearing her thirties, appears in the corner again—pacing in the elevator, caught the limbo that would be her legacy.

"Missing since her college days, suddenly she turns up at a five-star hotel, of all places—and disappears into the ether just as quick.  Where did she come from?  What was she doing there?  What happened to her?  Those have been the questions on everyone's mind…but not everything is as it appears."

For a moment, Nán is full-frame again, frozen.  Dark hair.  Dark circles around her eyes.  A pretty mystery, a sympathetic picture, a China doll for Martin Heiss to play with.

"Sometimes the truth is buried only inches under the surface!  It took my team of researchers and I no time at all to uncover the truth.   Anastasia Chen's no stranger to trespassing in hotels—this girl's a paranoid and dangerous schizophrenic!"

The still frame in the corner changes.  Martin Heiss could've chosen any of the pictures on Nán’s social media.  One of her studying, or smiling with friends, or at Disneyworld with her family...the picture that represents her on the Truth Unearthed was from the time she was processed by the NYPD for trespassing.  She could be the monster Martin Heiss was describing.  (And he’s describing a fictitious kind of schizophrenia.)

"It's no wonder she's jumping at shadows here, is it?  NYU records state she lost her scholarship for "withdrawal from academics".  And it took some prying, but the family admitted at long last, she's been on the streets—not locked up, like some would suggest."

"So the behavior on the video—"

"Was nothing more than one woman's insanity."

A society saturated with Hollywood's horror stories would believe that.  No investigation is held.  No public vigil.  After Martin Heiss 'debunked' it, the video fades into obscurity.

"I'll tell you one thing—"

"What's that, Martin?"

"The most dangerous thing in that hotel is that schizo."


	2. Unlucky

It’s coming up on winter in New York.  And in a regal hotel on Times Square, the furnace just kicked on.

Tried to kick on, actually.  It didn’t go so well.

One of the maintenance men (they had to get multiple saps to do what the last guy did) drew the short straw, and gets to go down into the basement.  Not alone, of course, no one goes into the basement unless the situation’s dire—and then, only in pairs.

There’s no ghosts in the Mercado.

But still.  They’re in pairs for…general safety reasons.  Just REASONS, okay?  Why so many questions?

Two minutes after the furnace was turned on, the vents started leaking black smoke.  The thing was supposed to be inspected just before it was run…and it was (though probably not _well_ ).  Old permanent resident Mrs. Ponner called down to the front desk.  She insists she can hear distant screaming from inside the vents.

Again, not ghosts.  There are no ghosts in the Mercado.

Rooms grow colder as management scrambles to round up their saps.  So unlucky Cameron and security management Luis are sent down to fix the problem.  Luis carries the high-powered flashlight.  Cameron is stuck carrying the toolbox.  They talk as they descend the stairs.

Neither of them believes in ghosts.

There are no ghosts in the Mercado.

“—Speak for yourself, man, I was supposed to go home an hour ago.” Cameron says.

“That’s management…I could be watching TV church in my office.”  Luis sweeps the flashlight back and forth scanning for spiderwebs.  They exit the stairs and he unlocks the double doors.

“TV church don’t count as church, we went over this…Did I ever tell you, you remind me of the guard from ‘Devil’?”

“That M. Night-Whatever crap?”  Luis pauses for a second, then points the flashlight beam at the doors behind the stairs.  The room where it happened.  “You know what they say.  It takes a suicide to let ‘em in…”

“You’re full of shit, man.”

Luis grins.  “You caught me.  Just fix the furnace, Cam, some of us got more work to do today.”

The dark concrete hallways would make anyone uneasy.  Never mind the fact that the place sat on the intersection of two major ley lines.  Every once in awhile, there’ll be scratching sounds in the dark.  A hum too low for anyone to consciously hear pervades the air.  All the staff heard about the freaky happenings at the Mercado (voices from empty rooms, phantom phone calls, wallpaper that crawls in the corner of your vision)-most have experienced things for themselves.  It’s old news.  But the basement is something else entirely.  It’s a place that inspires subtle unease.

Luis’s flashlight wanders over the faint cracks in the wall.  The old fluorescents up above only make them seem deeper.  They’re evidence that the building was once torn apart.  Management had the foundation checked out by an inspector, of course, but sometimes Luis wonders if the building won’t fall down on them.

“Remind me why we can’t have a _modern furnace_?” Cameron grumbles.

“Then we’d have nothing to fix.”

The answer is really ‘cheapness’, but for the sake of their mental health, they just sigh and carry on.  Cameron tugs at the hem of his scarlet monkey suit (no one likes the things.)

“What was that?”

“Luis, you’re full of shit.”

“No—back that way.”

They’re almost to the furnace, and as some kind of joke, Luis has stopped and swung the light behind them.

“Coulda sworn I saw bugs.”

“Not them again…”  Cameron knows they’ll be his next job.

“…Long ones.  Green ones.”  Luis sighs.  “I’ll go check ‘em out, you do your job.”

The security guard jogs off, and Cameron is alone.  He doesn’t give himself time to look around the creepy space—he just pushes through the door to the furnace room.

Situated at the back of the hotel, it’s always warmer than the rest of the basement, and has the faint smell of burning gas.  Cameron thinks he smells something under that.  Burning hair?  (It doesn’t have to do with his job, so he pays it no mind.)  The furnace itself is a monstrous thing.  It’s been in the building since…probably the 30’s.  It’s almost as old as the bitchy receptionist, and somehow, (unlike the receptionist), it still does its job.

Cameron checks the dials and indicators on one wall.  Nothing amiss there while the furnace is off.  He takes a wrench and checks the natural gas input.  Nothing off there, either.  The next thing to do is open ‘er up and look inside.

The metal’s surprisingly…warm.  It was supposed to have been off since yesterday.  The slits in the sooty door are dark, though, no sign it’s been on…Cameron brushes that off.  It’s not important to his job.  He just needs to get the job done so he can get out of there, that’s all he’s focusing on.  Cameron grabs the handle and—

“You qualified to fix that?”

“CHRIST on a BIKE—“

—It was just Luis, shining his damn flashlight from the door.

Trying not to sound like he just had a near-death experience, Cameron snaps, “Yeah.  I can fix it, I have a degree in mechanics!  You qualified to use that flashlight?”

“Fair enough.”  Luis turns it off and inspects the wall of furnace-specific tools and instruments.  He lets out a low whistle.  It’d take a genius to keep that old thing going.  Too bad the last guy…you know.

“Find any bugs?” Cameron asks.

“Nah.  Thought I did, but…nah.”

With a deep breath, Cameron takes hold of the door again, and pulls it up with scraping sound that makes him feel like his teeth are gonna fall out.  Like nails on a chalkboard.  Damn.

The inside’s dark—Cameron pulls out his own flashlight.  (It’s smaller than Luis’s, but it’s not the _size_ of the flashlight, it’s how you _use_ it.)  The inside is clean.  One of the middle management guys claimed a possum got in there somehow.  “No, seriously, it happened last February-we had smoke just like that.” Paul insisted.  But the furnace is empty.  Behind the two-by-two door is a chamber the size of a crawlspace, with a grid of gas valves making up the floor.  Beneath the valves, and in the margins around the edges, an oily kind of soot has gathered.  Cameron wonders, when was the last time this thing got cleaned?  ‘Not since last winter’, would probably be the answer.

“Smells like grandma’s cookouts.” Luis says.  He’s right.  It’s really not supposed to smell like that.  Something else grabs Cameron’s attention, though—the pilot light at the back of the furnace.  It’s waving.  Like there’s a draft coming up from below.

Cameron doesn’t think he just leans in to get a closer look.  It’s not like he sticks his head in the thing…

…But he’s close enough to get singed when the thing bursts into flames.

WHOOSH!

Cameron isn’t sure if it’s the rush of hot air or his own reflexes that send him flying back.  The door SLAMS shut with another _bang_!

“Christ!” Luis barks.

Before Cameron can think, Luis has him, and he’s patting down his front to make sure nothing caught fire.  The roaring from the furnace is immense.

“You hurt?!”

“No—they—they said they weren’t gonna turn it—“  Cameron’s too shocked to talk right.  In seconds, both men fall silent.  They don’t have time to be mad at whatever pendejo turned on the furnace.  They just watch the lights shift behind the door.  It’s too strange to comprehend.  They can’t process it.

The flames are flickering green.

The flourescents above them burn out, and it’s just them, in the four dancing beams.  The sounds from inside the furnace are warping.  Bits of green are coming out and crawling along the dor.

Not flames.  Dragonflies.

A sound rises in the furnace, while the two men just stand there, paralyzed.  It doesn’t sound like scraping metal.  It sounds like a human, screaming, in agony.  The sound’s unmistakable.  Anyone who’s ever heard it is shaken to the core.  The sound rises in pitch and volume, until—

The door starts rattling.

Something’s trying to get out.

That shocks Cameron and Luis out of their stupor.  Their shoes scrabble on the floor.

“Go!  Go!” Luis is screaming at the younger man.

Like either of them need to be reminded.

They slam the door to the basement closed, imagining they can still hear the screaming through the floors.  A few guests straggling in the lobby turn to gawk.  Cameron keeps his back to the door, panting; he catches his breath and tells Luis,

“We’ve—…we’ve gotta call someone.”

Luis can only nod.


	3. When There's Smoke

In the months since the Apocalypse, the Ghostbusters have gained some low-key fame.  They’ve kept busy combatting the paranormal.  They’ve been together through thick and thin.  Their equipment’s updated.  But some things never change.

“Holtz!  _Holtzmann_!  My _desk_!”

Three panicked seconds later, Erin’s desk is enveloped in a thick, white cloud of CO2.  It takes half a fire extinguisher to put out the flames crawling across the wood.  Erin curses as she waves smoke away.  There was some irony—in living in a fire house, with so many fires.  And explosions.  And—just Holtzmann, really.  That’s the third fire in a week.

Which is curious, because Holtzmann’s workspace is on the third floor, and Erin’s desk is on the second—Holtz has no reason to be near Erin’s desk with flammable things.  Abby figures that’s just Holtzmann’s way of saying “I like you.”  Patty figures Holtzy’s crazy.  They’re both right.

Erin’s taken care of the crisis by the time her shouts have summoned Dr. Holtzmann.  Said genius takes her sweet time showing up, sliding down the firepole in the slowest way possible.

_Squeeeeeak, squeak._

Strong eye contact, the whole way down.

_Squeeeeak._

It’s about two minutes before Holtzmann reaches the bottom.

_Squeak._

“…Yes ma’am?” Holtz asks, innocent as can be.

“Any idea what happened here?” Erin demands.

“Ah…no.”

“Are you _sure_?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Of course.”

Erin is about to say (or shout) something else, when that budding argument is cut off by the sound of the phone.  It doesn’t ring for long.  Abby tromps down the stairs.

“New case?” Dr. Yates asks.

“Not a clue.”

There’s no call of “We got one!”.  Not even when Patty, keeper of the knowledge, pokes her head downstairs, listening for Kevin.  Eventually the phone stops ringing.  The Ghostbusters (many months, many cases, and a few upgrades past their first Apocalypse) can only hope.

Kevin wanders up five minutes later.

“Hey, guys…” He starts.  “When the Scientologists call, what do I tell them?”

“Same thing as always, Kev.  That we’re a fire house.” Abby says with a sigh.

False alarm, she guesses.

“Right, but they keep calling.”

“Do you tell them that thing, that I just mentioned?”

“Nah.  I’ll start later.”  And as he wanders back out (a man on a mission, that Kevin), Abby has to shout after him—

“That was the Scientologists, right?”

“Nah, some hotel.”  Kevin stands on the stairs, rubbing his two brain cells together.  “The Market, I think?  Their ghost problem’s gotten bad.  _Mercado_ , that’s what it was!”

The tone of the room changes in an instant.

“Spanish for ‘market’…It’s not a market, it’s a hotel.  Weird.”  Then he’s gone—leaving a stunned silence in his wake.

The Ghostbusters exchange glances, and everyone’s thinking the same thing.  The same name, actually.  But no one speaks it.  Months of quiet, and suddenly the Mercado’s back on their radar.  Not good.  Erin is the first to throw out a hopeful suggestion, talking quietly.

“What do you think?  Class 1?  Residual PKE, leaking through?”

“Probably.  Only one way to find out.” Abby answers.

Holtzmann’s wearing her shit-eating grin.  Patty begs from up above—“Oh please, don’t let her say it…”

But it’s too late.

“Suit up, _y’all_!”

“One time, Holtzmann, I said ‘y’all’ _one time_ —“

That particular argument fades into the background as each Ghostbuster rushes to gear up.  They’re scattered to their corners of the firehouse (but still within pep-talk distance).

“No need to assume the worst, ladies!  Just a routine consultation!  Data-gathering only!” Abby shouts into the chaos.

“Want the new EMF and the electrostatic analyzer?” Holtz shouts back.

“Anything you can grab!”

“Make sure to lock down the lab, please!” Erin tries to help.  “Containment grid and everything.  Remember last time?  We don’t want any more ants, or fires… _y’all_.”

“You too, Erin?!  I trusted you!”

“We love you, Patty!” Holtz calls.

Business as usual for the Ghostbusters.

***

Only half an hour later, they’re standing in front of the grand hotel herself, worn brass façade looming over them.  On that spot, a few months and forever ago, they almost died.  (Finding parking was a bitch.)  Times Square is lively in the background.  People swarm the block while 100,000 square feet of LED screens make the cloudy afternoon bright.  Crowds don’t seem to notice the Mercado, that haunted relic from the 1930s.  Either they’ve forgotten about the near-Apocalypse—or they just don’t care.

“I got to do the last one.  Abby, do you want to do the honors?” Erin asks.

“I’ll ‘let’s go’ if there’s actually a ghost.”

“Fair enough.”

The Ghostbusters stroll in, and there’s an immediate hush.  There weren’t that many people in the expansive room to begin with.  It’s too late for the morning check-out, and too early for check-ins.  Still—the nervous employees waiting around the lobby all fall silent.  One aged receptionist noisily ends her phone call.  The Ghostbusters don’t even get to introduce themselves before a disheveled, middle-aged man strides out.

“You.  You four.  Out, now!” He calls—and his voice is so loud it echoes on the marble.

“ _Rude_.” Holtzmann says back.

“Wait, wait.“  Abby steps in with a rational tone.  “We’re the Ghostbusters, we were called here to—“

“I know.  That was a huge mistake.  You need to leave, or I’ll have security _throw you_ out.”

“Hey!  Sir!  No need for that, okay!  We’re The Ghostbusters, we’re here to do a job.”

“Yeah, I know what this travelling funny farm is.”

Abby isn’t having any of that.  “Then you know we’re professionals—and we’re only here to help.”

“ _Professionals_.”

The suit man looks at them with disgust—like he’s watching some jabroni on a street corner try to hand him a mixtape.

“Mmhmm.  This isn’t our first rodeo.  Not even our second!  We’ve done a lot, since the end of the world.”

“That’s right—we’ve busted a lot of ghosts since then.” Erin chimes in.

“Like the banshee in the Bronx, remember?” Patty suggests.  (It dissolves into chaos from there.)

“Oh, the ghost rat swarm—“

“We broke up that blood-sacrifice cult.”

“And started that _other_ cult.”

“We should…probably take care of that, eventually.”

“Mm…I like to think it evens out.”

“Okay then.”

The middle-aged man has almost turned beet red.  He towers over the Ghostbusters, raises a finger, and opens his mouth to speak.

A woman’s rough voice cuts through the lobby.

“Paul, your security’s in the back wearin’ a shock blanket.  And that’s the _least_ of our problems.  Let ‘em in.”

There’s a tense moment as ‘Paul’ and the receptionist glare daggers at each other.  Then Paul seems to realize the lobby is too crowded to have this argument.  Employees and straggling guests alike are staring.  With a vague gesture, he strides off, and the Ghostbusters assume they’re supposed to follow.

They pass gawking employees as they’re led to a records room in the back.  The Ghostbusters have gathered a good bit of infamy.  They’re used to the staring.  Not all the staff gathered in that back room are fans, however.  There’s a few glares from the crowd.  And some bored faces, some people mostly there for the show.  It seems half the staff have come down to see the infamous four.  The records room is packed.

There are security monitors on one wall, file cabinets shoved along the others.  Everyone’s speaking in hushed tones.  In the center of the room are the only two chairs—taken up by Luis Mora and Cameron Harris.  They’re still pale and shaken, being seen to by a housekeeper.  At the sight of the Ghostbusters, though, they both perk up.

“Alright, this circus ends now.” Paul starts (thinking he always has to be the first to speak).

The argument he left when the Ghostbusters arrived resumes: there are voices overlapping, middle-management and higher-ups all vying for the last word.  The Ghostbusters, Cameron, and Luis are stuck watching the feeding frenzy.

“We’re not paying for this!”

“I’m sick of the ghosts here—“

“If everyone would just QUIET DOWN—“

“Driving away business—“

“The BUILDING _exploded_ , everyone saw—“

“No one could prove that!  It was all a hoax!” Paul cries.  “Our superiors _banned_ the “Ghostbusters”.  I’m not letting any replaceable fodder get me fired.”

“Our superiors work out of a nice, cushy office upstate.  They weren’t here in July.  They aren’t here now.”

The Head of Housekeeping—a stooped old lady in a green uniform—steps to the center of the room.  “Those Ghostbusters saved New York last time they were here.”

“Yeah?  I wasn’t there.  As far as I’m concerned, every time they show up, one of our staff _dies_.”

The receptionist standing next to the Ghostbusters (her nametag reads V A N E S S A) leans close, holds out a bill, and whispers “Twenty bucks if you make it Paul.”

“No.” Abby whispers back.

Holtzmann takes the 20.

“Believe in ghosts or not, sir, we’re on the brink of getting back in the paper in a _bad way_.”

There’s a deathly silence.  Paul’s about to hit someone.

“If you don’t let the Ghostbusters in, my department’s quitting.” The Head of Housekeeping says.

There’s nods from around the room.  A couple people say “Us too”.  It’s the lower staff against the executives, and Paul, the one in charge, has to give in.

“…Fine.  Whatever.  Just no press.  And their bill?  It’s coming out of your paychecks.”  With a last accusatory point towards the lowest workers in the room, Paul leaves.  Vanessa stands with her arms crossed.

“We’ll see about that.” She says.

“Lord—glad that’s over.  Down to business, y’all.” Patty addresses the room.

“Right.  Whoever called us said there’d been an incident?”

Abby starts with the usual questions.  When did it happen?  Who can corroborate?  How long has the haunting been going on?  Did you keep a sample of the soiling?  Between Cameron, Luis, and the lower staff that stuck around to care for them, they haltingly get the story out.  (They did not keep a sample of the soiling.)  The Ghostbusters don’t dally.

It’s time to check out the furnace.

Luis ends up taking them.  Cameron volunteers, but Luis pulls rank, and tells the younger employee to go home.  None of the other staff are keen on going down into that death trap.  The middle-aged security guard gets the biggest flashlight he can find and leads the Ghostbusters down into the basement.

“I’m getting some weird spikes on the PKE meter, it’s all on-and-off…” Abby says, nearly tripping down the stairs.

“Thermal’s wonky too.  Not the kind of readings you’d expect from a concrete hallway…” Erin says.  “Are you sure there’s nothing back there?”

Luis points the flashlight where Erin indicated.  “Old electrician’s offices?  Nah, ‘s been empty since July.  Can’t get the smell out, either.”  Then Luis ushers them away from Rowan’s old room.  He’s a little on edge (and it shows).

The furnace seems normal when they get there.  Holtzmann taps at the dials.  The women check their instruments.  Luis stays outside.

“Still all over the place here.”  Abby’s taking PKE readings from all over the room, holding the little machine up like it’s a cell phone without signal (or she’s Rafiki in the beginning of the Lion King).  “Max reading above supernatural entity lower parameters, but it’s not—it’s not _consistent_.  Patty?”

“Background noise seems normal.  Normal as it can get, in the middle of a ley line intersection, I guess.  It’s not like—“

_ScreeEEEE._

“…You havin’ fun there, Holtzy?”

Holtzmann (who had just opened the furnace door) stands there with a pensive look.  “I should’ve brought marshmallows.” She says, looking inside.

Abby sticks the PKE meter in there and notes something odd.  “It’s gone.”

“Same here.” Erin confirms.

“I think we need to bring in a specialist.”

“Who?”

“You don’t mean—“

“I do.”

“What specialist?” Luis asks, a little afraid.

“The Hat.”


	4. The Hat

The Hat—trademark pending—bounds in, straining against his owner’s leash. Guests turn to gawk at the big golden mutt with a work vest on. He almost trips over his own big paws as he tries to find purchase on the marble floor. Mike Hat—and his owner, God’s Perfect Idiot himself, Kevin—wear the Ghostbuster’s logo.  
They both look very cute in it.  
“Kev, man! Glad you could make it.” Holtzmann greets them at the door. She’s standing with Abby, ready to guide a walking disaster zone and his dog to the basement.  
“Me, too. The taxi didn’t like dogs too much. Good thing we’re on official Ghostbusters business!” Kevin’s more than happy to be included. He tries to straighten his glasses as Mike Hat tries to sniff a lady’s suitcase.  
“Yep. Let’s get this job done!”  
Kevin rubs Mike Hat’s head and happily gives him the command phrase. “Let’s bust some ghosts, boy! Let’s bust some ghosts!”  
And Mike Hat’s off. He pulls Kevin in a lazy circle around the lobby, sniffing and listening around. He seems to catch a trace and leads them to the left.  
“He senses something.” Erin notes.  
“That’s kind of expected. There was tons of activity here in July. The barrier’s really thin.” Abby says back. “Let’s see if he finds anything in particular.”  
It seems he does. Mike Hat leads Kevin straight to the elevators. They stand to the side as a group of people get off, and its like Mike Hat almost loses the scent. He darts in as soon as the elevator’s empty. Kevin almost trips over the half-inch gap. Mike Hat sniffs at a forward corner, decides he doesn’t like something about the elevator, and darts out again. He seems to follow that same scent straight towards the basement door.  
“Guess he found something after all...” Abby says.  
Mike Hat loves the people and the attention of the lobby. By the time he’s wandered to the basement door, though, the excitement seems to be wearing off. He wiggles on his leash as the door’s opened and casts a look back at Kevin. The Hat smells something off about the place. But as long as his human’s guiding him, he’ll go.  
Animals sense more than humans. Sometimes, more than instruments. About a month into the whole “Ghostbusters” endeavor, the ladies found out Mike Hat was a spectacular psychic. A “ghost sniffer”, Erin named him. Instruments can tell them if there’s an entity around. Instruments can’t tell them if entities are friendly.  
It takes a little coaxing to get Mike Hat down the stairs. He’s looking around at the walls. The infrasound symphony is loud and clear to the Hat—and there seem to be voices under it. Lots of different voices (some human, some not.) Mike Hat can’t communicate this, of course. He just sticks closer to Kevin’s side.  
His owner turns to go back under the stairs. (Kevin gets a weird sense of déjà vu—but he can’t figure out why he’s seen this basement before.) The Hat suddenly stops in his tracks. He’s not having any of that room under the lobby. No sir.  
“What’s wrong, boy?” Kevin asks.  
“Try to get him closer, see if he’ll go.” Abby suggests.  
Kevin does, gently tugging on Mike Hat’s harness. He even goes first, trying to show him there’s nothing to be afraid of. Mike Hat plants his feet and starts to whine.  
“Yeah, that seems about right.” Abby says.  
“Me too, dude.” Patty tells Mike with a reassuring pat.  
“All right, on to the furnace.”  
Mike Hat’s not too afraid to go in that room. Once in awhile he’ll perk his ears up and look around—like he’s noticing something no one else can sense. Erin’s writing down all of the Hat’s reactions. Mike Hat’s not terrified of the furnace room, but he’s certainly distracted.  
“Look at this…” Kevin’s inspecting the furnace, poking at the slots in the door.  
“Don’t get your fingers stuck, buddy, we’re not having another Chipotle wall incident.”  
Mike Hat notices the furnace too. He goes to sniff it, and suddenly backs up. He doesn’t like that, either.  
“Results seem inconclusive.” Erin says. Mike Hat’s gone back to sniffing her pockets (she keeps treats in there for the mutt.)  
“Looks like that’s all we got for you today, buddy.”  
“You’ve been such a good sniffer, haven’t you?” Patty croons as she gives the Hat a scratch.  
“Thanks. You know, it’s harder than it looks—“  
“I was…I was clearly talkin’ to the dog, Kev.”  
“Oh.”  
“You did good, too.”  
“Thanks, Patty.”  
Kevin gets waved off at the door. Mike Hat seems grateful to be out of that building and off work. They find a taxi that’ll take both of them back to headquarters. The Ghostbusters regroup in the lobby, notes out, to make a game plan.  
“Hat Test gave us some mixed results, so—phase 2 investigation?” Erin asks.  
“We’re gonna be here all day.” Patty sighs.  
Phase 2 is a deeper examination of the haunted site, involving a thorough search of the premises, more radioactive instruments, and Patty’s least-favorite thing—splitting up.  
“I’ve got some more questions for the staff. Who wants the basement, and who wants the elevator?” Abby’s prepared to rock-paper-scissors this.  
“Do we have to do this every time?” Patty—the voices of reason—asks. “I mean, every time something scary happens, you white people want to split up. We can’t keep doing this. We are not the Scooby Gang.”  
“If we were, Erin would be Daphne.” Holtz says, stroking Erin’s arm.  
“…Thank you?”  
Patty gets them back on track. “What I’m saying is, every time we split up, one of us almost dies. Remember that mannequin?”  
“I think so.” Abby has to give her that one.  
“The freakin’ ghost train?”  
“Yep.”  
“It’s not safe, is what I’m sayin’.”  
“You can go with Holtzmann.”  
“I said I wanted to be safe!”  
“Aw, come on, Pat. We make a great team! I’ve got a new full-spectrum EMF recorder, let’s check out the elevator!”  
Few people can resist Holtzy’s puppydog look. Patty isn’t one of them. Twelve seconds under that pleading gaze and Patty melts—she sighs (resigned to her fate).  
“I want the ghost trap if we’re doin’ this.”  
“It’s all yours. Let’s boogie!”  
Patty follows the youngest Ghostbuster across the lobby. That leaves Erin and Abby.  
“Mmkay, Ghost Girl, where do you want to go?” Abby asks. “Upstairs? Epicenter of the ley lines?”  
“You know, I think I’ll poke around the basement. Just make sure everything’s kosher, down there.”  
“You got it.” Abby offers a secret handshake, and Erin returns it. “I’ll start cataloguing, get a timeline going and all. Keep your walkie-talkie on!”  
“Will do. Good luck!”  
Erin heads back down.


	5. Phase Two

To say Patty and Holtzmann are trapped on the elevator would be wrong.  They just…aren’t able to get off of it, at the current moment.  ‘Trapped’ is such a scary word.

Getting in it to investigate, Holtzmann had the brilliant idea to swipe her hand down the entire button panel, Elf-style, because…science. 

“Really?”

“EMF says something’s up with this corner.  I think something’s here with us.” Holtzmann explains.  She makes a swirly motion towards the forward corner with her little machine, indicating _there_.  “What else do you do in an elevator?”

Once the doors close, it’s apparent they’re not going to stop at every floor.  The doors don’t open again.  They keep going up and up.  It’s easy to pass it off as faulty wiring in an ancient elevator system, or a glitch in the computer due to _someone_ smashing _all the buttons at once_.  Patty and Holtz don’t care much.  Because the full-spectrum EMF recorder keeps spiking.

“80…120…back to 90…” Holtzmann narrates.

Patty notices the security camera in the opposite corner, and wonders if Luis is watching over them, like a chubby guardian angel.

“Back to 70…and up again...”  Holtzmann smacks her EMF recorder (sometimes gadgets need a little tough love, a little percussive maintenance).  “What is the _dealio_?”

“’Least nothing’s popped out at us.”

“Never say never.”

“Let’s just enjoy the ride.  Apparently, we got time.”  Patty settles back with her proton gun out and ready.  She watches the floor numbers go up and up.

“Haven’t seen anything like this ghost.  I hope it comes out to party soon.”  Holtzmann mirrors Patty’s posture and relaxes.

The air in the elevator has changed.

Neither woman will say it out loud, but the elevator suddenly feels a little _smaller_ …just a little _darker_.  Things start moving in the corner of their eyes.  Above and below them, machinery groans, just barely covering up the scuttling of insectoid legs.  In the gap in the elevator door, shadows are flitting.

Patty decides elevators are the worst.

“You know, there are only 27 elevator-related deaths a year.”  Holtzmann’s trying to help.

“I know that.  I’m the one who told you that, at our last job.”

“So, only a point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-one-five percent chance we’ll die.”

“That’s a lot of zeroes…That’s—that’s good.”

The elevator decides to shudder.

The lights flicker, too, for good measure.

“…I’m hauntin’ you in the afterlife.”

_Ding._

“Looks like we’re here.”  They’ve stopped on the 25th floor.  Holtzmann adjusts her tinted glasses as the doors open, casual as can be.  She checks the EMF recorder one more time—and follows the signal out.  Patty quickly thanks Jesus and walks into the hallway.

***

It’s quiet downstairs.

Ducts hum, pipes gurgle, and once in awhile there’s a suspicious scurrying, but other than that, the basement is devoid of life.  Erin doesn’t make a sound as she explores.  There’s an irrational fear in the back of her mind—that if she breaks the silence, something malevolent will hear her.  It’s a leftover instinct from the nights she spent under the blankets (completely still) as Old Lady DeMille watched from the foot of her bed.

There are cracks running along the walls.  At one point, it looks like someone tried to duct-tape over them.  Very effective.  Erin stifles her thoughts about the Mercado’s staff and presses on down the hallway.

_Scuff._

“JEEeez!”

Erin has to stop and breathe—she caught her heel on a crack, making a sound that almost echoed down the hallway, scaring the blue out of her jeans.  (The khaki out of her suit…?)  In an instant she realizes she’s being silly for being so quiet.  There’s nothing to be afraid of.  She took down a 20-story ghost, for pete’s sake.  She’s an adult.  More importantly—she’s a Ghostbuster.

Just for show, she scuffs her boot again.  Nothing scary happens.  Erin hoists her proton gun a little higher and carries on.

All Holtzmann’s gadgets say activity’s normal.  No entity there with her.  Just background noise.  God, what Erin wouldn’t give to study the ley line intersection…She’s there to do a job, Erin reminds herself.  A kind-of-boring job.  At least she hasn’t gotten slimed yet.

 _Don’t jinx it._ She tells herself.

At some point, she turns around.  There’s nothing to be studied in the basement storage rooms.  She knows where she really wants to go.

Erin uses her gun to push open the double-doors.  Once again, the sound makes her tense.  She can’t help remembering the last time she was there.  (She half-expects to see sparks coming from the gap under the doors.)  When they swing open, there’s…nothing.

The epicenter of the two ley lines should really look fancier.  All Erin sees when the doors swing open is bare concrete, bare walls, bare furniture.  Of course, she admonishes herself—Homeland Security swept out the place after the Ghostbusters saved the world.  Erin remembers where everything was, though, reliving her first time there as she moved into the room.  At the ley line junction was the machine, of course.  Fifteen feet tall and sending out sparks (there were still some burn marks on the floor—and a battered masking-tape X that must’ve been where construction started).  Erin remembered where the body landed, face-down.  The second death she witnessed that week.  Not as impressive as the first, she had to admit, maybe three out of five stars.  Good effort.

Anyways.

Erin goes and stands on the X.  The very center of the ley lines.  Some touristy instinct makes her do it, like how people travel hundreds of miles just to stand on the four-way junction between the four Midwest states.  She doesn’t feel all that different.  Maybe there’s a bit of static, and a change in air pressure…

She jumps on the X.  Twice.

Because she’s an adult.

Nothing of note there.  Dr. Gilbert looks around the rest of the room.  It was a lot messier last time she was here.  Some fixtures stayed—some old scratched desks, a chair in the corner, a wardrobe with a shattered mirror, a mattress-less cot.  Luis was right.  The smell of burning flesh still lingers in the air.  Is she imagining that?  The feeling that the room isn’t quite _right,_ is she imagining that too?

That feeling is foreign, creeping up on her when she least expects it.  It warps the concrete walls and makes everything seem uncertain.  Erin tries to shake it off, like she did earlier with that little bout of fear.  The room—she was looking around the room.  Right.

What wasn’t snatched up by Homeland Security was probably thrown out.  Erin imagines degrees in frames being tossed into a dumpster.  The last remnants of a life much like hers, just gone.  What do people do with dead people’s stuff?  Patty would know.

Point being: the room is empty.  Nothing but blank desks, empty bookshelves, no ghosts.  A few minutes have passed, and Erin can breathe easier.  It’s just a room.  It’s just a room, and Rowan is long gone.

She drags the old, over-stuffed chair to face the X, pulls out a tablet, and starts to read.

***

“Since _September_.”  Abby scans over the binders and documents she’s spread out over the front desk, talking to no one in particular.  “This one haunting’s gone on since _September_ , coming up on a year now, and no one thought to call…anyone?”

Vanessa makes a vague “I’m on the phone” gesture and ignores her.

The piles and piles of incident reports the Mercado faithfully kept are a godsend.  It takes Abby no time at all to unearth them from the records room.  She guesses there are documents in there from the 1930s (ones that she and Erin would love to read).  Thank God they all survived the building exploding.  (Abby makes a mental note to invest in good filing cabinets.)  Every unexplainable complaint is written down, staff notes are all gathered together by date.  Some of the more dramatic ones immediately catch Abby’s eye— _Actress in showgirl dress(?) seen in restricted area_ , for instance, or _Sleep-deprived Chavez sees dead pilgrims, is an idiot, sent home early_.  Those, Abby wants to investigate later.  But the current haunting is priority.  And Abby quickly picks out its patterns.

Every haunting, like an illness, has its own symptoms.  The Brown Lady of St. Mark’s came with cold spots and a “no cursing” rule.  The last case the Ghostbusters took had the walls of a restaurant ooze green slime on certain days (that one was disgusting).  The haunting Cam and Luis called them there for has a pattern, too—one that _predates_ Rowan’s suicide.

(There are a few complaints about Rowan in the logbook as well…“Too much eye contact” and “please keep him away from the female guests”, are among them.)

Late September is when the first symptoms start.  Someone notes there are phantom phone calls, and they put in a request to fix the phone lines.  _Laughter and crying_ are heard from empty rooms in early November— _a woman’s voice_.  _Female guest in maintenance stairwell, disappeared before backup arrived_.  Someone drew a small penis in the logbook (Abby takes that as more of a complaint about management than a real note).  More phone calls from empty rooms.  Always empty rooms…and always to one extension, an in-hotel line.

December 6th: _Why the fuck are all the mirrors disappearing?!_

That one was probably Rowan’s fault.

A guest gets spooked by long, black hair disappearing around a corner.  Someone reports panicked yelling from an empty room (the room’s found in disarray by housekeeping).  Things quiet down in January.  Abby imagines this is when construction for that final, giant machine began.

Then the night of February 8th happens.

1:00: _Major power surge, blew fuses 3 and 6.  Will need replacing.  $$$._

1:30ish: _Mr. Dervish (room 0419) was accosted by intruder.  Reported at checkout.  What does he want us to do about it?_

_Elevators on the fritz._

And one pretty major, pretty familiar complaint:

5:30: _Furnace spews black smoke through vents.  Oily.  Probably opossum_.

It seems the problem was never totally fixed.  For weeks after that, there were guest complaints about burning smells coming from the vents.  An invoice mentions cleaning black soot from ceilings and carpets.  Seems management was too cheap for a permanent solution.  Abby remembers the time she left a frozen dinner in the oven about 30 minutes too long—she wouldn’t wish that nightmare on her worst enemies.

The only other time February 8th is mentioned is in an Internal Investigations report.  _Feb 8th security footage leaked._ Culprit still unknown.  Abby kind of shrugs at that.  They’re not really the Mystery Gang, that’s not the Ghostbuster’s problem.

Symptoms of the haunting continue after that.  Phone calls from empty rooms to one extension.  Sightings of a female.  Laughing, crying, shouting from empty rooms, yada yada yada.  Something new pops up.  _First floor guest hears screaming from vents_.

It’s all the same haunting, Abby’s sure.

And it’s _months_ before Rowan killed himself.

On that day, there’s not much in the notes.  A few papers in the back somewhere terminate his employment.  The only things written down are under July—

_Fucker finally did it.  Winners of the pool: Callie, Brooks, Hall, Doyle._

Nice, guys.  Real nice.

Strangely enough, there’s no incident report for the world ending.  Just a lot of invoices for inspections, repairs, hiring staff to replace the ones that died or quit…Homeland Security did a lot of shushing in the weeks after the Apocalypse.  The Mercado opened again for business soon after, and kept on catering to wealthy tourists.

“Those junkless boys in black do a thorough job, don’t they?” Abby asks the receptionist.

Vanessa sighs.

No outstanding ghost activity, either, Abby notes.  Until those two employees were attacked.  The break in the barrier was sealed.  The Mercado’s ghost problem was fixed by the largest ghost trap the world had ever seen, so…what gives?

“Are you ladies about done?” Vanessa asks.  “Not that I don’t love you taking up half my desk—”

“We’re, uh—we’re getting to the bottom of it.” Abby answers.

Vanessa holds the phone to her shoulder, actively ignoring some poor guest.  “Do you even know what spooked those poor saps?”

“Well, it’s definitely a Quasi-Focused Class 2 Vapor.  Hasn’t caused any real damage yet, but we gotta be careful.  It could be one of your normal resident ghosts, or something not from here that was dredged up by the barrier opening…” Abby shuffles some papers.  “What it probably is, though…is a death echo.”

“Death echo.  That’s what the kids are calling it these days…”

“Yes, a death echo’s when an event leaves an imprint in the fabrics of space-time that echoes back, like a radio signals bouncing off celestial bodies in space.  It plays back like a recording.  It’s harmless.”

“Honey, I know what ‘death echoes’ are.  You think you’re the first to bust ghosts in New York?”

Then Vanessa rolls her eyes and goes back to fielding calls, ignoring Abby completely.  Abby just shrugs.

There’s a button blinking on the line extension board that Vanessa’s been ignoring for a good ten minutes.  If there was another receptionist working, Abby would point it out.  It’s almost not worth it to bother the grumpiest thing this side of the ghost barrier…but Abby’s scientific curiosity wins out.  She waits until Vanessa checks in a honeymooning couple (who have second thoughts about their choice in hotels once they see a Ghostbuster there).

“What’s this line busy for?” Abby asks.

Vanessa gives it a bored look.  “The usual.  Electrical problems.  Room 2027…”  The receptionist’s long nails torture her keyboard for a second.  “Empty.  It’s going to 280, it’s a defunct line.”

“In-hotel?”

“Of course.  The guests usually call to hear my beautiful, sonorous voice…but short-circuit calls are to that line.  The basement.  Defunct now.”

“What do you hear when you answer it?”  Abby’s heartbeat speeds up, watching the blinking light…

“Nothing.  We don’t answer it.  Listen, this is an old hotel.  We get odd phone calls, creaks and groans, things that go bump in the night…it just happens.  But pick it up if you want.  Be my guest.”

Vanessa presses a few buttons and holds out a corded phone to Abby.  Abby takes it.

***

“What _is_ that?”

Holtzmann’s whisper is the loudest thing in the hallway.  Like the atmosphere in the elevator, the air in the upper-floor halls seems almost…oppressive.  It doesn’t help that the décor is something out of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”—or, the version of “The Shining” that Stanley Kubrick’s little old grandmother set-decorated.  The floral carpet and floral wallpaper (while heinous) seem to absorb all sound.  The hum of their packs—even the sound of their breathing—barely reach their ears.  The effect is subtle.  Unsettling.

But not as unsettling as Holtzmann suddenly whispering “What _is_ that?”

“Holtzmann?  Please don’t play games right now—“

“No.  Look.”  Like a dog on a scent, like a woman possessed, Holtzmann is staring at the corner fifty feet ahead of them…Or maybe she’s looking at the mirror above a little useless table at the end of the hall.  Patty can’t tell.  She just knows Holtzmann’s deadly serious.  The historian holds her proton gun a little tighter, ready to cover Holtzmann should things break bad.

“…Huh.”  Holtz looks back down at her EMF.  And just like that, she’s off—following the signal down the hall.

Around the corner is…nothing.  Thinking maybe it was a guest, Patty checks around for where they might’ve gone.  She pulls on a door marked “STAIRWAY-STAFF ONLY”.  Locked—she’d have to have a keycard to get in.

One more uneventful turn, and the Ghostbusters are faced with a grand staircase (one open to guests).

“Patty?  Do we wanna?”

“Well, looks like the elevator’s out of service.  Guess we’re takin’ the stairs.” Patty grumbles.  She shifts her pack to a more comfortable position, and starts down.

It’s gonna be a long trek.

The next hallway looks exactly the same.  Holtzmann’s EMF takes them off the staircase, down another random hall.  Patty notices another security camera.

Then, they both see it.

It’s silent—like an image separated from sound.  It’s the heel of someone’s shoe, and their long black hair, disappearing around a corner.  Fast, too.  Patty and Holtzmann nearly jump.

“Did you see—?” Holtz asks.

“Oh, did I!”  Then—not liking the silence, not liking the sneakiness—Patty yells down the hall.  “HEY!  WHERE YOU GOING?!”

Nothing.

“Come on!”  Holtzmann calls, and they take off running.

Down the hall, around the corner, across an intersection, and—nothing.  Nothing!  Holtzmann is immediately scanning all around for signal.  The atmosphere in this hallway is terribly _wrong_ —it’s disorienting, almost frightening.  The patterns in the walls and carpet seem to be moving.  Creeping.  Thankfully, neither Ghostbuster stops long enough to notice.

Only when they hear a staff-only door open does that subtle fear come to a head.

“ _Go!_ ” someone yells (no one knows which one), and they’re running, with no conscious reason why.

A floor later, Patty spots that image again.  It’s so real.  Patty can pick out the color of its shirt.  She alerts Holtzmann with a quick “ _Hey!  There_!” and chases it.

“You have the longest, most beautiful legs in the world!  Wait up!” Holtzmann calls after her.

Floor after floor, so it goes—an EMF reading here, a snippet of a voice, a figure at the end of a hallway there.  They’re so close.  Holtzmann gets a strong signal, and follows it until—

“Holtzy, stop!”

Patty stops her—grabbing her pack just feet from the railing overlooking the lobby.  They look around, a little dazed in the white light, to find themselves alone.  Guests mill about under them.  The EMF meter doesn’t make a sound.  Whatever they’re chasing, it’s gone.

***

Erin flicks through files on a tablet, just _barely_ resisting the urge to switch to Candy Crush.  Homeland Security is good at sorting—even if they only use greys and beiges in their online databases.  (They could really use Holtzmann’s maniac color-coding.  It wouldn’t help the sorting process—wouldn’t help anything at all—but it’d make the whole layout more _fun_.)  Everything that was in that dingy little ‘apartment’ is catalogued.  As much as she hates digging through that sociopath’s life…she does kind of want to know what happened to all of his stuff.  The degrees, especially.

The WiFi cuts in and out.  Erin reminds herself the building’s old.  It has bad wiring.  The lights didn’t flicker at all.

In the corner of some Internet cloud, she finds digitals of what she was looking for.  All gold foil and fancy Old English font.  Bachelor’s, doctorate from M.I.T., a Hughes medal, J.J. Sakurai prize…cripes.  Decades of work.  All just—mixed in with the drawings and equations on the walls, like they have equal importance.  Erin picks out a few notable ramblings from the photos of all that clutter.  She recognizes the basement door from the Aldridge Mansion, re-drawn pretty well, and a print of Gertrude Aldridge’s portrait.  _The Invalid won’t stop staring at the door_ , was one of the spookier statements left on the wall.  _The Invalid_.

Erin stows the tablet back in her duffel bag (Candy Crush all but forgotten) and looks at the room as it stands.

Not everything was taken, she’s reminded.  Scars in the foundation remain.  When she turns her head, Erin catches the slightest motion in the remains of the wardrobe mirror.  (For a split second, she was terrified of that movement.)  Shattered glass—almost fine enough to be sand—stays trapped in cracks and corners.

And speaking of mirrors…there’s one left.  It leans high up on a catwalk, threatening to rain shards down through the grate.  It’s got enough glass left in it to reflect the room.  Erin notices her posture is still kind of bad (at Columbia, she’d get points off her quarterly review for that).  She sits up and straightens her lapels.  Better.  She shakes off the feeling she’s being watched, and pulls a book out of her bag.

As soon as she does, Erin almost drops it.  That feeling, the _not-good_ , the _can’t-breathe_ , it intensifies all at once.  It’s the subtle but nagging feeling something’s tightening around her throat.  She tugs at her collar and takes a deep breath.  Better.

Not much, but better.

Erin blinks and stares at the cover of the book.  Words seem to jump around.  She’s seen the cover of Ghosts from our Pasts a thousand times (she designed it with Abby, forever ago) but suddenly it’s all in an alien language; there’s a horrible tightness in her throat, and there are things moving in the corner of her eyes—

There _is_ actually movement.

Her head snaps up.  She follows the motion.  The mirror, up above—

Erin isn’t alone in the room.

All at once, she registers a woman.  (Not her.  _Beside_ her, by the chair.)  She’s tall, dark-haired and tan, standing there in an image clear as a real reflection.  Erin doesn’t get the chance to take in many details.  She stopped at the dark-blue marks around the woman’s neck.

It’s instinctual.  Erin looks to her right—where the person in the mirror should be standing—and sees only empty air.  She doesn’t do a double take.  One was enough for her.

Erin calmly (but quickly; very, very quickly) gets up and vacates the premises.

***

Abby’s frozen, listening to the receiver.  She’s sure (if she’s just quiet enough, if she’s still enough), she’ll hear something in the static.

There are patterns in the white noise, Dr. Yates can tell.  The line’s active.  It’s not giving her beeping, like the line is dead, there’s _something_ there.  Abby’s been listening for almost a minute when Vanessa decides she’s had enough.

“See, it’s nothing.  What did I tell you?”  Vanessa reaches over to shut off the call, but Abby shoos her away from her own extension board.

“Hang on.  I’ve almost got something…”

And she does.  She can almost pick out…soft voices, like a conversation caught by a phone someone left off the hook.

Abby fumbles for her recorder (tape, of course—old school.  Cleaner sound.)  She sets it up and waits.  She knows it probably won’t pick up what she’s hearing—and hell, it probably is just a glitch in the system, or the phone line picking up bits of another call—but Abby’s a Ghostbuster.  She’s prepared for anything.

Even Vanessa stands nearby, waiting.  What little patience she has is waning, but she’s waiting nonetheless.

The conversation seems to get louder.  Abby can tell it’s not really a _conversation_ ; more like fragments of conversations strung together at random.  Whatever it is, it’s changing.  Getting clearer.

Then, all of a sudden—

It stops.

And clear as day, Abby hears,

“ _This goddamn hotel better not be haunted, North_ …”

Abby’s jaw almost hits the floor.  It doesn’t stop there.

“ _North?  Listen, this…”_

With every syllable, the static gets worse and worse, louder by the second—the audio distorted and unintelligible.  Abby holds the phone away from her as the electrical interference gets _very_ loud, _very_ quickly.  And, as suddenly as the talking started, the call ends with an anticlimactic _click_.

“…Well, that sure happened.”  Abby picks her jaw up off the floor and wastes no time checking the tape recorder.  It did its job.  She turns it off, and asks the receptionist, “Did you hear that?”

Vanessa clicks around on the board, looking disgruntled as ever.  “I heard it.  I heard another electrical bug!  God damn it, someone’s gonna have to rewire something…”

“That didn’t sound like a bug—that sounded like an EVP.”  Abby wraps the aux-input cord around the tape recorder and stows it in her favorite pocket.  Quicker than the receptionist can complain, Abby is whipping through the records, trying to find anything relating to that room number.  She’s stopped only by familiar voices.

“Abby!  That you?”

Abby looks up to see Patty and Holtzmann, looking like they’d just run a marathon, tromping down the main staircase. 

“Hey!  What did you find out?” she calls back across the lobby, bothering the hell out of patrons and staff alike.

“Tell you what we found out—“ Holtzmann wheezes.  “I hate exercise.”

“Yeah, well that’s what you get for living off Pringles and energy drinks.”  Patty wraps an arm around the youngest Ghostbuster’s waist and supports her anyway.  “Abby, we got somethin’ pretty weird for you.  EMF data and all.  We gotta regroup.”

“I got some goodies too.” Abby pats her favorite pocket.  “Hey.  Incoming.”

Erin makes a reappearance, speed-walking across the lobby, a little paler than usual.

“Hey, guys.” She says, casual as can be.

“Erin, how’d it go?” Abby asks.

“Hmm…about normal.”  Erin’s nodding a little too enthusiastically.

No one gets the chance to inquire further, because an unfriendly voice cuts in.

“Oh, God.  _You’re_ still here?”

Abby (the closest) whips around and almost comes face-to-face with the Head of Management, standing in an Employees Only doorway, looking happy to see them as ever.

“Ladies?  If I can even call you that…”  Paul looks up and down their uniforms.

“You can.” Abby insists.

“We believe in you.” Patty agrees.

“…Let’s just take this show somewhere more _private_ , if you’re done bothering the guests.”

The room in the back is still bustling with employees (though not as many as before).  Head of Housekeeping is there, eager to hear what the Ghostbusters have to say.  A young Indian man (a porter, by his uniform) sits on top of the filing cabinets.  Luis tries to fill out his paperwork and be invisible in the back.  He’s still on the clock, after all.

“I know everyone here’s a little tightly wound, so we’ll keep this short.” Abby starts.  “We’ve identified a Class 1 haunting whose locus is within the perimeter of this building.  It seems it’s malevolent—“ She looks around to see the other Ghostbuster’s reactions (Erin does a ‘so-so’ gesture).

“You’ve got ghosts.” Patty translates.

“Not that _unusual_ , given where your building is and what happened here…”

A young black maid stands up, addressing the Ghostbusters.  (She’s got a soft voice, and a gentle face.)

“We’re just trying to make ends meet without gettin’ our heads ripped off…Is there anything you can do?”

And Paul has the nerve to step in.

“All right, cut that out.  It’s been fun playing along with this little _game_ , but you—you—“

“Latoya…”  Her voice is barely above a squeak.

“I didn’t ask—you’re not helping!”

“Ay—you may wanna be a little _nicer_ to your staff, man.”  Patty steps up to him, being about as _passive_ -aggressive as a New Yorker can be.  “They’re the ones that keep this place beautiful and runnin’.  You heard them about quitting.”

Truthfully, Paul doesn’t want that.  And he’s scared of the thing that attacked those two underlings in the basement, same as the rest of the staff—but he’s taken the opposite tack in dealing with that fear.  Paul’s so deep in denial and poisonous machismo that when anyone brings his attention to the danger, he lashes out at the messenger.  When Patty steps up…well, he can’t back down, can he?

“And?” he asks, calm as can be.

“Alright, listen!” Abby starts (and it’s Erin’s—and Holtzmann’s—job to step in front of her.  This isn’t their first rodeo.)  “I’m not a fan of your attitude!  You’re not making our jobs any easier, and I’ll tell you what!  If this is how you treat everyone that works for you—I’ll bet you’re just a _little bit_ to blame for what happened here in July.  Just a _little_ guilty.  Did you even know the guy’s name?”

Paul, who’s crossing his arms and fuming, quickly replies, “Yes!”

Low-hanging fruit there, Abby reminds herself.  Everyone’s first name is on their nametag.

“His last name?”

“ _Yes_!”

But as he stands there—for an awkward amount of time—he can’t seem to say it.  He becomes more and more aware of everyone’s eyes on him.

Finally, Erin mutters, “North.  Come on, that was easy.”  She didn’t know there’d be a quiz, but she’s glad she looked over all those degrees.

“See?  I knew that, too.  Rowan N—…”

Abby looks over at Erin, and pieces of the puzzle start to fall together.

“North?”

Patty has been quiet for a while.  Something caught her eye.  The bank of security camera monitors—one, in particular.  The camera in the elevator.  Something about the view (the angle, the carpet pattern) was familiar to her—and in an instant, an old Internet mystery comes back to her, clear as day.  Whatever Paul and the rest of the Ghostbusters are arguing about seems inconsequential.  Patty asks a question out of nowhere.

“Any of you ever heard of Anastasia Chen?”

That flips a switch for Paul.  Less than five minutes later, they’re standing on the sidewalk outside, parking still un-validated, without an answer why.


	6. Unsolved

Martin Heiss’s video ends.  Patty sits back in her seat.  Holtzmann plays with a quadripole accelerator and a screwdriver (two things that should never mix) while Abby tries to take one or both away from her.

“How close did y’all keep up with the news, back before we got together?” Patty asks.

While Abby and Holtzmann are distracted, Erin sheepishly answers, “Pretty well, I think?  Some stuff happened with North Korea…I think Prince died?  …I lied, I have no idea what’s happened with North Korea.”  Columbia kept her busy.  She didn’t keep up with news—much less _ghost_ news.

Abby finally gets ahold of the screwdriver and answers, “Holtz and I examined the video when it first dropped.  We didn’t find anything paranormal.  Honestly, I’d forgotten it exists.”

“Y’all miss a lot, with your head up in those clouds…This was the mystery that rocked Long Island.  This lady, this chemist, straight-up disappears, and no one knows what happened to her.  Even today, with all our microchips, GPS trackers, and social media, what-have-you…no one can find any trace a’ her.  Lot of people didn’t care.  Mostly Internet detectives keepin’ the case alive now.”

“I-I hate to be the naysayer here, but there is no case.” Erin says, gesturing to the desktop Patty sits in front of.  “It was all laid out in that episode.  Mental illness.  Mystery solved”

“Still doesn’t explain how she got there or where she went, Erin.” Patty shrugs.  “Still a family out there, missin’ her.”

Abby moves over to the table where they’d dragged out their ley-line research, made digital copies of the EVP and analyzed it, electronically compared it to voice samples from the missing woman’s Facebook page (still up, not touched in years), and went through each other’s accounts of what happened during Phase 2.  They connected the dots.  It’s all one haunting, dating back way before the Ghostbusters became the Ghostbusters.  Before Anastasia Chen’s video, even.  The ghost got one message through before the ghost-call got dropped (by Ghost-Verizon, probably).  That was, Anastasia Chen and Rowan knew each other.  Find out how, and they’re one step closer to doing the damn job they were doing before they got kicked out.

Abby moves the stack of Mercado-branded pens she’d angrily stolen on her way out, and clicks through the Homeland Security evidence database on her laptop.

“There’s _definitely_ a connection.  I mean, that’s _her_ voice—saying Rowan’s name in an EVP.”  Abby’s been looking over all they have on the July incident since they got back.  “We have to pursue this.”

“Kinda weird, isn’t it?  Investigating real, living people?” Erin points out.

“Totally weird.  If it helps, at least one of ‘em’s dead now.”

“It does not—it doesn’t help.”

“Worth a shot.”

“Love the enthusiasm—but we’ve been booted, my dudes.  We’re exiled from the land of 26th and Broadway.” Holtzmann points out.

“There’s still stuff we can do!”

“Like what?”

“…We can order pizza.  Then!  We can figure out the connection.  I know there’s something in all these scribbles he left behind.  If they knew each other, we’ll find out when and how.”

“Way ahead of you.”  Holtzmann is already looking up the pizza joint’s number.

It’s quiet for a second.  Then Patty drops even more wisdom.

“…You remember the Boston bombing?”

Abby mutters “yeah”.  Holtzmann (with an unbent paperclip in her mouth) says, “’S familiar.”

“Well, I was working in the subway when that went down.  We were all told the subway might be next.  That big attack happened in ’95 in the subway, with that toxic gas—people’d bomb the subway cuz it’s where everyone in New York goes.  Easy target, right?  So I got to readin’ on those guys—on those true-crime shows.  You feel me?”

“Si.” Holtzmann replies.

“Guys, Rowan was a terrorist.” Patty states, grave as the Ghostbusters have ever seen her.  “Just with a different type of bomb.”

“How does that help us nail down the connection?”

“I was gettin’ to that.  These guys, they all operate the same way.  Couple months before he started placin’ those weird sparking things all over the city, he’d be scouting out where to put ‘em.  Abby, there’s gotta be some records of where he went leadin’ up to that whole retro ghost fiesta.  GPS data, ticket stubs, receipts.  Start there.”

Abby’s hands start flying over keys—she’s on that with no hesitation.

“What’d he do next?” Holtzmann asks.  She’s totally hooked.  Erin’s listening intently.

“With all the research n’ all done, he’d have to do a test run.  To make sure the machines worked.  And he’d have to watch to make sure it worked right.  That was probably in the hotel, sometime leadin’ up to July.  Guess no one else saw, ‘cause there’s no report of some ghost flyin’ around that building prior to—“

“The Apocalypse.” Holtzmann offers with a grin.

“Do you like that word, or something?”

“Yes, in fact, I do.”  Holtzy says it a couple more times (quietly).  “Apocalypse.  _Apocalypse_ …”

“Lord have mercy…” Patty moves on.  “Then we got the smaller ‘bombings’ leadin’ up to the main event.  The Aldridge Mansion, the Stonebrook Theater, that thrift store in Chelsea, my subway—he hit maybe half a dozen places.”

“Did you know?” Erin asks softly.  “When he talked to you in the subway, did you know?”

“He was there to kill as many people as he could?  Nah.  I wish I did know, Erin.  Would’a slapped the devil outta that white boy.”

“Preach.” Holtz witnessed.

“Tell you the truth, I thought he was there to walk in front of a train.  That’s what I get for bein’ nice to men, I guess.”

“I think I got something!” Abby calls, scrolling through a page of raw data.  “You were right.  I don’t know what I’m looking at, exactly, but you were right.  He staked out the same locations like six…seven months before the apocalypse?”

“ _Apocalypse_ …” Holtzmann echoes.

“Why wasn’t this in Homeland Security’s notes…?”

“Guess they didn’t look for the pattern.  Or care to look—I mean, it was already over, we took care of it.” Erin offers.

“There’s only a few places he ever went.  About all of them were haunted.  This guy visited the Aldridge Mansion…a lot.  A lot, a lot.  God, this reads like a sad book.”

Holtzmann launches the unbent paperclip in Abby’s direction.  “Pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” she says, scrunching up her nose in that Holtzmann way.

“Hey, visiting the same Chipotle’s isn’t weird!  It’s… _structured_.”

While Abby launches a Mercado pen back at Holtz, Erin notices something.

“Look at this.”  Erin points to the line she’s talking about.  “Isn’t this…twice the entrance fee to the Aldridge Mansion?”

Abby stops her battle with Holtzmann (pauses it, actually) and gives Erin’s find a look.

“Could be a glitch?  The sale went through twice?”

“Maybe.  But—later, the same day.  Same thing.  Twice as much subway charge.  And—…my God.  Patty was right.”

“Don’t sound so surprised, girl.  Abby!  C’mon, give it up.”

While Abby and Patty start up the five-minute version of their secret celebratory high-five (both grinning), Erin calls Assistant Mayor Lynch for a favor.  They’re gonna need more data.  While they’re both on hold (Erin with the mayor’s office, Holtz with Patzeria Perfect Pizza Pasta & Trattoria), Holtzmann makes a statement.

“You know, we might not find out anything just _sitting_ here.”

“I know, but like you said, we’ve been kicked out—“

“I am well aware, sweet Erin, but we have a probable witness to Dr. North and Ms. Chen’s activities.” Holtzmann motions with a flourish towards the words _Aldridge Mansion_ on the screen.

“…You’re thinking—“

“Someone ought to pay our oldest friends a visit.”

***

Of course, Erin and Holtzmann are paired together.  Under the writ of Unofficial Firehouse Rules, those who came up with the idea get first go at carrying it out (unless they’re grounded, or they really don’t want to).  Erin talks on the phone with the firehouse, holding onto the handle on her door, while Holtzmann chews on a pizza crust and drives the hearse.

“Have anything yet?” Erin asks.

Back at the firehouse, Patty’s trying her luck logging into another Homeland Security database.  Heaven help them, they love their databases.

“Yeah, it’s goin’ through.  What have we waited forty-five minutes for, again?”

Abby answers for Erin, doing a maintenance strip-down of their equipment nearby.  “Traffic cams, live cams, closed-circuit CCTVs in mom and pop’s corner convenience store—it’s all there.”

“Eyes everywhere.  Makes you think twice about pickin’ a wedgie.” Patty grumbles.

“Speak for yourself, Patty.” Holtzmann leans over and says into the phone.

No one comments on that.

“We’re almost there.  Good luck.”

“You too.  Don’t get slimed!” Abby shoots back.

“Very funny.”  Erin almost drops her phone when Holtzmann quickly merges two lanes over.

Amazingly, mercifully, the last few minutes of the ride are calm.  Erin shuffles the papers in her lap and breaks the silence.

“I feel like we’re on an episode of CSI.” She says with a little smile.  “You know, like we should have badges.  Or we’re going to talk to a guy who won’t stop unloading crates.  We should have sunglasses…”

“No worries.  I came prepared.”  Holtzmann flips down her yellow shades and gives Erin a cocky grin.

Finding parking is a nightmare, per the New York norm, but Holtz does a “Fast and Furious” maneuver and snatches a space.  The air’s getting dry and nippy.  Trees are turning colors.  If one squints, they look like they’re on fire.  Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Holtzmann don’t waste time outside.

They push through a small crowd in the gift-shop-slash-ticket-sales area.  The mansion seems exactly as they left it half a year ago.  More popular, maybe.  Same dusty smell.  Erin wonders how they got the ectoplasm out of the carpeting in the main hall—it took her _weeks_ to get it all out of her hair.

Garrett catches sight of them a split second before they catch sight of him.  They’re across a long room.  He prays to whatever God is up there that they didn’t really see him.

“Hey, there’s that guy.  That guy that didn’t poop his pants.” Holtzmann points out.

“Think he remembers us?”

He’s given the room a panicked once-over, grabbed a decorative silk plant, and tried to put it between himself and the Ghostbusters.  In a split second, he realizes that won’t work.  Garrett looks left and right again.  Maybe there’s a door—

“Yep.  Looks like he does.”

By the time Garrett’s tried to squeeze himself under the antique desk housing the cash register, Erin and Holtzmann are three feet away from him.

Holzmann thoughtfully rings the “ring for service” bell.

They hear a sigh from under the desk.  Garrett unfolds himself and straightens his blazer.

“Hello again.” He says with a huff.  “Here to humiliate me?  Or just to let loose another ghost in the foyer?”

“Maybe some other time.  We’re on a _case_ , you see.  Official Ghostbusters business.” Holtzmann lets him know.

“Really, now.”

“We just want to ask you a few questions.  Nothing else.” Erin reassures him.

“ _Really_ , now.”

“Yes.  You keep saying that like—yes, that’s all.”

Garrett watches the last customers file out the door.  He checks his watch—half an hour before the next one.  He won’t be using up his breaktime.  If it gets them to go away….

He sighs.

“Fine.  Fine.  But Ed Junior isn’t here—“

“Actually, these are for you.” Erin starts, leaning on the counter.  “How long have you been working here?”

“A while—could you not touch the Fabergé eggs, please?  They’re museum property.”

Holtz gives him a look and sets them down.  Slowly.

“Better answer truthfully, buddy.  I’ve got butter fingers.”

“…Are you threatening—?”

“No, we’re—we’re not.  I’m sorry, we don’t do this “investigation” thing a lot…”  Erin tries to pull Holtzmann to her side while Holtzmann glares at the tour guide.  “How long have you been working here?”

“Five years.  Don’t break anything, I’ll talk.”

“You were guiding tours last year?  Dealing with the public?”

“Yeah?”

“…And after you got attacked by that ghost, you went back to work here?  I’m sorry, I just _don’t_ understand.”

“It’s the only place that’ll pay me for my history degree.  I get health benefits, too.”  Garret slouches and leans on the counter.  “Working in a haunted mansion?  You have no _idea_ how popular I am with the babes.”

“…Okay.  Back on track—you were working here, giving tours, a year ago.  Correct?”

“Yes?”

Erin pulls out a photograph (courtesy the Mercado webpage—may it never be updated, amen).  “Do you recognize him?”

Squinting at the picture, Garrett furrows his brow.

“I don’t know…What, is he on some kind of FBI watchlist?”

“Not anymore, I don’t think so—“

“Sex offender watchlist?”

Erin takes a second look at the picture.

“I—…well, _maybe_ , but that’s not what we’re here for.  Think back, maybe a year ago.”

Erin doesn’t have to say anything else—Garrett rocks back, his eyes wide.

“Oh, _him_.”  Garrett’s practically having flashbacks.  “ _Him_.  Why are you guys here?  Something happened?”

“Not important, bucko, just start talking.” Holtzmann threatens.

“It—it was last year, like you said.  Like, every Tuesday he came around—odd hours.  He wouldn’t turn his cell phone off.  I think it was a cell phone.  I thought he was there to out me for doing that candelabra trick—it really spooks the tourists, you know—then I thought he was just there for me.”

“What about her?  Do you remember her?”  Erin pulls out a Facebook photo of the woman they’re looking for.  Garrett squints a little harder this time.

“…I think…I think that’s…”  He takes the picture and studies it.  “Yeah.  Maybe.”

“ _Talk_ , buster.  We ain’t here to stand around.” Holtzmann reminds him.

“There was this twitchy girl with him, maybe once.  She was just as bad.”

“You remember Anastasia Chen?  She was here, with Rowan?”

“Yeah, and they pulled some _stunt_.  I should’ve called the police.”  Garrett hands back the picture while Erin gawks.  “She started a conversation with me after the tour.  She was nice enough—and hotter than the middle-aged divorcee’s that come through here on a weekday.”

“Focus, please.”

“I am, I am—she started hitting me up and I didn’t notice where her friend had gone.  No one’s allowed back in the museum without a guide, it’s right on the sign!  …Don’t tell Ed Junior what I’m telling you.”

“We won’t.  Are you sure it was both of them?  Both of these people.”

“ _Yes_!”

“Can you give us a date?”

“…If I do, can we be done here?  I’ve got a tour in, like…soon.”

“Yes, yes, absolutely.”

***

Five minutes later, the Ghostbusters stand outside on the sidewalk, arms linked, cell phone on speaker.

“Checking everything I can get my hands on…you guys are good.  Hope Holtzmann didn’t smash anything.” Patty says from the other end of the line.

“I won’t, if all his info checks out.” Holtzmann promises.

“You know, you could go into forensic accounting.” Abby tells Patty.  “That’s a thing, you know.  Forensic accounting.”

“Do forensic accountants get pizza on Wednesdays?” Patty asks.

“No.”

“Then my ass is staying right here…hey, Erin?  Holtzy?  You should get your asses back here.  We got somethin’.”


	7. Evidence

Days later (two in-firehouse meals, one Kevin emergency, and three coffee spills later), the Ghostbuster’s lair looks more like the headquarters of an investigation.

A certain video stays paused on one of the many screens.  Not the viral one—a segment of security-cam footage.  Patty made the first find, using the date Erin and Holtz got her.  She knew the subways under New York by heart—knew where to look, at what time.  And there they were.

The para-terrorist, and the missing woman, making their way through the Huntington subway station.  It didn’t seem she was being held against her will.  She’s like Garrett described her.  While she tries her damndest to hide her illness (and the effects of thorazine withdrawal) in public, there are little symptoms she can’t shake, a twitch here or there.  And the Rowan North of late 2015 is a little different than the one the Ghostbusters met.  There’s no cornering poor customer-service workers to tell them about the end of the world.  He keeps—almost fearfully—to himself.  He’s less confident.

The evidence only gets more illuminating—more damning—from there.

Patty calls up an old contact: a coworker from her days at the metro.  They talk (loudly) for about an hour, and finally, Patty gets ahold of weeks of subway-car footage, presumed deleted.

“Dartanius just collects that stuff.” Is the only answer Patty has.

There, they find the two trading papers, sporadically trying to write as the subway car sways and jolts.  What they’re doing is obvious.  They’re trading work.

Erin (with her keen sight) starts deciphering pages and pages of apocalyptic scribbles.  She’s looking for any sign of foreign handwriting, any gaps in the work that show missing pages.  Meanwhile they find more of the same kinds of interactions.  No one says it out loud, no one dares—but everyone starts thinking the Apocalypse was a two-person job.

It’s actually Abby that finds their biggest piece of film evidence.  While Holtzmann spins upside-down in a computer chair, Patty takes a much-needed break, and Erin skims through the same pages without really reading them, Abby works on a hunch.

The Cort Square Diner suffered two break-ins and an almost-robbery since the market crash in 2008, so it installed closed-circuit cameras.  They’re as low a quality as one can find, but they’re good enough to identify one very loyal customer.  Sure enough—the same date Garrett gave them—Anastasia Chen is with him.  Rowan is almost consumed by his work.  But halfway through the meal, the missing woman gets his attention, and slides a piece of paper across the table.

Rowan looks at it with the deep, immutable horror of a subway rider seeing a mariachi band enter their car.

Meanwhile, Anastasia Chen just smiles.

None of the Ghostbusters know what to make of this.  Until Kevin, wandering through to ask where the Cheetos from the breakroom went, takes a casual glance at the video and says, “Oh.  She’s giving that guy orders.”

Kevin wanders away.  Abby and Erin look at each other.  They’re both thinking the same thing, but Abby voices it first.

“Maybe she wasn’t just _in on it_.” Abby says quietly.  “Maybe she was calling the shots.”

“We don’t have proof one way or the other.” Patty reminds them.  “Yo, I know this looks bad—hell, I might even be wrong.  But I’m worried you’re believing that Martin Heiss guy.  I don’t believe that girl is evil.  Schizophrenics, they’re more likely to be _victims_ of violence than to go out and hurt somebody—y’all are scientists, y’all should know this!”

Looking at the woman on screen (arms crossed, wearing a smug smile), no one has an answer.

Erin’s been pulling up page after page on her own devices.  She shoves the tablet across a cluttered work table and summarizes what she’s got.

“I’ve been over all of this, and aside from needing a drink, I can’t figure out how he made the leap from electron cyclotron resonance to nuclear magnetic resonance, in scaling down the reactor…And there, when the first models were generating too many free radicals, the answer—insulation via an oxidizing aluminum alloy—just kind of _appears_. Maybe someone was helping him, with the work that crosses over into chemistry territory—you said she was a chemist, right?”

“Two weeks away from a Doctorate.” Abby notes.

“Behind every great man is a woman—a woman he stole all the credit from.” Holtzmann says with a grin.

Erin ignores that.  “He covered his tracks.  It’s like, if she was involved, he didn’t want anyone to know she was there.  In fact, the only reference to ANYONE else in all this—what did he call it, blueprints for the end of the world?—was…”

“…what?” Holtz helpfully asks.

Instead of answering, Erin just grabs an old book from her duffle bag.  It’s been there since she took it to the Mercado.  It seemed to be the catalyst for the ghost activity Erin witnessed in the basement.  (Previously, it was used to prop up a wobbly table.)  Erin flips through Rowan’s copy of “Ghosts from our Past”.  Back and forth, through drawings and equations.

“…Abbs, remind me why that book had enough blank pages for some nut job to write a manifesto in it.” Holtzmann asks Abby.

Abby sighs.  “Books are published on, like, reams of paper, and those only come in 12 pages, so we either had to fill those out or cut down what we’d already written.  I thought it’d be a neat place for a crossword, but our editor didn’t.”

“Here—“ Erin picks up her explanation.  “—There’s only a couple of notes like this.  ‘ _The Invalid won’t stop staring at the door_.’  And a picture of the basement door from the Aldridge Mansion.  Page 347, ‘ _Human dowsing rod’_.”

Holtz chews thoughtfully on her favorite chewing pen, then uses it to gesture vaguely.  “You said something yesterday, something about the other books.”  For once, she’s serious.

“Yeah?”

“Bring ‘em up again for me?”

It takes Erin no time to find the catalogue of books found in the basement.  Holtzmann stands close behind her, reading over her shoulder.  _Very_ close behind her.  Without any instruction from Holtz, Erin just scrolls down the list, looking for what she might mean.  Theory of Fields, Beyond the Standard Model, NorthEastern Ley Lines…

Erin hears a sharp hiss right behind her.

“…Care to share, Jillian?”

“Not a great selection…”

Erin just goes back to scrolling.

A second later, Holtzmann reaches around her and jabs a fingerless-gloved-finger at one of the titles.

“’S about the Seoul Ghost Experiments, right?  I’ve read that, it’s—”

“It’s a history of the occult in 1980’s science, I’ve read that too.”

“Yeah, but it’s got three whole chapters about these experiments in Korea, seeing how “sensitive” the “average” person is.  Their control group was all people with disorders.  Some bad science in there.  The control group came out as more sensitive to paranormal forces.  People with different neurotypes as “ghost gages”.  Controversial stuff…” Holtz says, with liberal “air quotes” throughout.  “…Ooh, and there, a history of ley lines and sacrificial rituals!  …Eight.  Eight uses for a dead body.”

“People using people as ghost gages.” Erin whispers.

“Guys.  Guys!  Holtzmann and I came up with the PKE meter _after_ the book came out.  There was no PKE meter found in his stuff, how was Rowan pinpointing all those ghosts?” Abby practically yells.

“’The Invalid won’t stop staring at the door’.” Erin echoes.

“They were together at the places Rowan hit!”

“Human dowsing rod.”

“There’s our connection.”  Holtzmann’s grinning ear to ear.

“…But was she an accomplice?” Abby finally asks the burning question.

“I dunno about that.”  Patty’s pulled up her video—the security cam footage taken the last time Anastasia Chen was seen alive.  The original video, not Martin Heiss’s narrated version.  The rest of the Ghostbusters gather to watch.

“Just—try to see it not like she’s runnin’ from ghosts, or somethin’ she’s seeing.”

There’s a long span of silence as the video plays.

The Asian woman enters the elevator, and spends the ride pacing and rubbing her arms.  She does notice the camera in the corner.  And the apparent malfunctioning of the elevator.  It doesn’t move again.  She steps out—looking up and down the corridor.  Abby and Holtzmann were right, there’s no signs of ghosts in the video.  No lights or shadows, no unexplainable movement.  Just a human.  She stays within camera sight, and visibly avoids employees-only doors, until she steps barely out of camera range and disappears forever.

There’s a long span of silence after the video ends, too.

“We were wrong…” Abby admits.  “That Heiss asshole was wrong, she was running from something real!”

“And no one’s seen her since.” Holtzmann says in her most ominous voice.

“Don’t do that.” Patty tells her.  “Holtzy’s right—it’s like she never left the building.”

“She must’ve.  There’s nowhere left to go!”

Erin’s been awfully silent.  She’s distanced herself from the growing argument, flipping back and forth through the pages of Rowan’s book.  Something about the drawings sets her on edge.  There’s something in there that sets off alarm bells.

 _Open the barrier_.

“Hey.”

_The fourth cataclysm_

“Hey!”

At the sound of Erin’s voice, everyone else pipes down.  Erin holds up the book for everyone to see.  Sharp, angry lines scour the page.

_I will lead them all._

“There are an awful lot of flames in this book.”

Once again, no one has to say anything.  Their minds go to the same dark place.


	8. The Furnace

Cold air (and a few leaves) sweep in behind the Ghostbusters.  They’re across the plush _Welcome_ carpets before the staff can even react.  It’s prime check-in time—the lobby is bustling.  All heads turn to see the women in full ghost-busting gear.  Two housekeepers stop to watch.  Luis (back on duty) stands up from his spot behind the desk.  Vanessa ignores the commotion.

“Hey!” Luis calls.  “Hey, you can’t be in here!”

Cameron (walking down the stairs, toolbox in hand) is by his side almost instantly.

“Wait—man, wait!”

“I got orders, Cam—we all got orders to call the police if they show up!”

“Just hold up a minute—“

“’Ey!  Listen up!  We got some shit you need to hear, now, about that girl that disappeared from here!”

To everyone’s surprise, it’s Patty that’s taking over the operation.  She’s already jogging across the lobby.

“Two minutes!  Just give me two minutes!”

Luis’s hand moves from his walkie-talkie.  None of the staff move.

Up on the second floor, overlooking the gilded lobby, Patty stands in the place she and Holtzmann last saw the apparition they chased from the 25th floor.  She checks the hallway behind her, and notes the camera at the end.  From there she examines the railing.  It’s a little lower than she’d expect, for safety’s sake, but it’s got some nice art-deco wrought-iron work.

“All your décor—vintage 30’s, right?  Who you got designing this place?  Looks like original Shandor.” Patty says casually.

“…I guess?” Cameron calls back.

(Patty knows it’s an original Shandor design.  That’s her second-favorite architect, she’d know his work from a mile away.)

Finally, Patty finds what she was looking for.  Where the handrail’s bolted to the closest column, she finds scuff marks—as if something hit the railing hard enough to knock it loose.  It’s since been repaired, but the evidence remains.

A familiar face shows up.  Paul’s followed by an exhausted-looking secretary.  And, as predicted, he’s not happy.

“What…?  We gave you an official, executive order—!“

“Aw, good—you need to see this.  I’m about to drop some straight reality on y’all.  Blow some minds.  Yo girl Chen—she was last seen on this camera.  Comin’ this way.” Patty points back at the hallway.

Paul crosses his arms.

“Someone, check the monitors, see if I’m right.  I’mma bet y’all haven’t changed your security since then.  Am I right?”

Paul doesn’t answer.  His silence speaks volumes.  Abby heads for the room with the monitors, while Erin stands at the mouth of the hallway to relay what Abby says.

“Now, Holtzy, baby, come stand under me—maybe three feet out.  Good, good.  Abby!  Can you see me?!”

The camera facing the stairs doesn’t pick her up.  Neither does the one towards the doors.  They catch most of the lobby—just not that overlook.

“No!” Erin relays.  “No, you’re in a blind spot!”

“Can you see Holtzmann?!”

“No!  There’s—she says that whole area, she can’t see!”

Patty addresses the lobby beneath her.  “Anastasia Chen—that girl from the video?  There’s nothin’ supernatural about her disappearin’.”  Patty points to the camera behind her—the last one that caught the missing woman. “Now, she came down this hallway, right?  She hit this rail, and fell!  From there, it’s a clear shot to the basement door.  All’a this, and where my coworker is, is blind spot!  That’s why she disappeared off the video…No, Holtzy, you don’t have to lay down.”

“H’Okay.”  Holtzmann makes a show of getting back up.

“There’s your mystery solved, dude.  Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll be needin’ back in that basement again.”

***

The furnace room is exactly as they left it.  It still smells of iron, soot, and something oilier.  Despite the chill outside, the great machine hasn’t been turned on again.  The air is utterly still.  It’s the moment of truth.

Abby watches the PKE meter in her hand.  It hasn’t made a sound at all.

“We’re good to go.” She says.  “…Holtzmann, I nominate you.  Let’s open ‘er up.”

“Well, dun’ mind if I do…” Holtzmann says in her best Elvis impression, doing the accompanying swagger-walk up to the door.  Her casual sense of humor is weirdly comforting.

The door puts up a fight, as always, opening with an ear-piercing _skreee_.  Holtzmann uses her phone’s flashlight to sweep around.  The inside of the furnace is a maze of nozzles.  She reaches out and scrapes something off one.  Then something charred a few feet in catches her eye.  It’s probably just trash (the other Ghostbusters always stop her from picking up trash) but Holtzmann goes for it anyway.

She grabs a tool off the wall—a long pole with a sharp, hoe-like end for cleaning the mechanical monster—and uses it to scrape the object forward.  Once she has it in her hand, she turns to her compatriots.

“Erin!  Strip!” she says, with urgency.

“Ohh no.  Uh-uh!  Fool me once, Jillian!”

“Erin, just—please!”

Maybe seeing the blackened bit of metal Holtz is holding helps persuade her.  Erin gently sets her pack on the ground, and unzips her jumpsuit.  Once she’s pulled it past her waist (exposing the civilian clothes she wears underneath), Holtzmann grabs her hip, and compares the thing she’s holding to the rivets on Erin’s mom jeans.

It’s a match.

Abby uses the abandoned tool to scrape something else from the gap the door slides into.  She holds the greyish shape in her gloved palm, and slowly realizes it’s a fingernail.  A whole human fingernail.

“I think we found Anastasia Chen.” Abby says grimly.


	9. What Little Remains

The lobby of the Mercado turns into a circus.

Men in dark jackets stand at the entrances, and wait patiently by the propped-open basement door.  They ensure their crew can go to and from the vans outside without incident.  A district attorney talks to one of them, shuffling warrants as he does so.  One stands by the Ghostbusters—waiting patiently in the little sitting area.  He hasn’t talked in an hour.  Dozens more men and women (wearing jackets labelled CSI) bustle to and fro, having just another day at work.

Paul angrily tries to direct guests around the forensic operation.  Other staff are on the phone with the hotel’s owners.  It’s a nightmare, any way you look at it.

Eventually, Holtzmann gets up and scuffs across the lobby.  She’s not one for sitting still.  No one stops her as she side-steps a CSI dude carrying a heavy-looking box, and tromps her way down into the basement, thumbs hooked in the straps of her pack.  Outside the furnace room are a few collapsible tables.  The lighting’s terrible, as always.  Crime scene investigators are at work on every one, processing and bagging things brought out on sterile metal trays.  Two more Homeland Security agents stand guard by a short, round Indian woman, bent over a table, rearranging evidence.

“Hail and well met, there.” Holtzmann says to the two agents.  “Hawkins?  Roruke?”

They look up at the noise, and quickly figure out she’s talking to them.  (She called them the wrong names.)

“Oh.  I thought someone was guarding the door.” Hawkins says.

“I thought you got someone to guard the door!” Roruke hisses back.

Neither of them gets a word in after that.  They don’t even get to address Holtzmann.  At that moment, the Indian woman whips her head around, recognizes the legend slouching before her, and grins.  Her day has gone from good to great.

“Well, well!” she says, in a voice that suggests she’s made of happiness and bubbles (with a beautiful, thick accent).  “ _I_ know _you_!  Welcome to my office.  I’m Homeland Security’s chief M.E.”  She whips off a rubber glove and presents her hand.

Anyone else would’ve backed off, fearing germs, but Holtzmann just takes her hand and gives ‘er a rough shake.

“I’m the Ghostbuster’s youngest PhD.  Nice to meet ya.” Holtzmann says back with a grin.

“You ladies have sent a lot of work my way.”

“It’s always nice to meet a fan.”

Finally, Holtzmann looks over at the contents of the table, and raises her yellow-tinted goggles.

“I know, right?” the medical examiner says.  “Not a lot left to work with.  Can’t give you a preliminary cause of death, but I’ve got an inkling.”

“Was it something in the scarf area?  Erin’s ghost had some bruises on her neck, or something.”

The M.E. gives Holtzmann a questioning look, but doesn’t ask.

“If you mean the hyoid, you may be on to something.  Lucky find, this—“

She takes a Mercado pen out of her pocket and turns to the table.  Holtzmann reluctantly follows her direction.  The M.E. turns over a small U-shaped bit.  It could be wood, or melted plastic.  It certainly doesn’t look important.

“Found it in a gap under the air shutter.  It’s a little bone, in your throat.  Kind of like that second jaw eels have?  Just nowhere near as cool.  It exhibits perimortem hemorrhaging stains.  It was broken before it went into the furnace.  But interestingly enough, this!”

The M.E. traces the shape of a larger, charred knot of bone and tissue.

“Radius, ulna, humerus, full set of epycondiles—all my favorite words.  This exhibits the classic boxer’s position.”  She pulls her arms up (like she’s about to sock Roruke).

“Sure does.” Holtzmann says, nodding.  She’d like to see the tiny M.E. sock Roruke.

“I’m not _legally_ allowed to _make guesses_ , or say what I _think_ the cause of death is, because of some _sticks in the mud_ …”  The M.E. tries to subtly point to the two Homeland Security goons.  “…but I’d bet twenty dollars this person was asphyxiated shortly _before_ expiring.”

“Expiring—before expiring?”

“Oh, yes, it means ‘dying’.” The M.E. says helpfully.

At this, Holtzmann smiles.  “Oh, I know all the phrases meaning ‘death’.  I collect them.  Kicked the bucket.  Counting worms.  And my personal favorite…to assume room temperature.”

“Very good!”

“I mean—I mean, why _before_ expiring, what does that…?”

The M.E. can’t really answer this.  She gestures with a loose rubber glove, farther down the hall.  A man in a C.S.I. jumpsuit is trying to gently set the big metal furnace door (pried off its track) down on some plastic sheeting.  He drops it a little bit, with a _clang_ that resounds down the hall.  The cold fluorescent lighting clearly shows nail marks, cutting through the centuries of soot…nail marks on the inside of the door.

Holtzmann takes out the crisp 20 Vanessa gave her, and slides it across the evidence table.

“I didn’t understand half of what you said.  But lady?  You’ve earned this.”  Holtzmann smoothly does a two-finger salute, and sweeps back upstairs.

The M.E. waves her new money in front of the two agents and gets back to work.

As grim as the mood is in their little sitting area, Holtzmann is glad to be back with her family.  They’re all sitting quietly, not looking at one another—but they’re close together.  Erin’s knee touches Abby’s.  Patty’s hand rests on Abby’s arm.  Holtzmann sets her pack at her feet and collapses on the overstuffed couch (leaning her head on Patty’s shoulder).

Abby quietly asks, “Any news?”

“…Our assessment was correct.  What Erin saw in that mirror was accurate.  Probably garroted, then into the furnace.  The small lady confirmed.” Holtzmann answers.  “You know, I love it when we’re right.  We got a pretty good streak, too.  10 out of 10, always right.  This time?  Not so great.”

“Well, at least there was no…’A Rose for Emily’ situation.” Abby says.  Always a silver lining.

Patty loops her arm around Holtzmann’s shoulders.  (The blonde is so short, it’s a natural position.)  And Patty can’t help thinking—as she’s thought for the last hour, over and over—about her conversation with the paraterrorist.  Patty smiled at him.  She smiled at him from behind the safety glass, and Rowan smiled back.  He talked with such confidence, knowing he’d killed Anastasia Chen and gotten away with it, knowing that girl was months in the furnace and he was going to end the world…If only Patty had known.

Would’a slapped him into the next life, that’s for damn sure.

The hard fact is, there’s nothing any of them could have done.  Rowan killed 128 people (between the ghost invasion, the destruction of the Mercado, and the buildings he’d smashed).  They just found number 129.  They try not to think about that—and most of all, they try not to think about the cremation stats Patty filled them in on two hours ago.

Most of the human body is vaporized when it’s burned.

For months, the guests and staff of the Mercado Hotel were _breathing her in_.

“…You know, it’s almost funny.” Holtzmann says.

Patty stares down at her.  “Okay, I’m terrified.  Anyone else terrified?”

“What’s funny?” Abby asks, always one to poke the bear.

“Takes a lot of strength to garrote someone.  Lot of _huevos_.”

“…Eggs?” Erin guesses.

“Yeah!  You got it right, Erin!”  Holtzmann reaches over to give Erin’s leg a congratulatory smack.

Abby almost smiles.  “I’ll bet he wasn’t expecting her to fight.  Wish I could’ve seen that asshole’s face when her video leaked and everyone was looking for her.”

“I wonder who put it on the web…” Erin thinks aloud.

A few staff members are visible from where they sit.  Vanessa fields calls, Luis reassures a couple of elderly guests, two housekeepers and a supervisor watch the CSI people cart out black plastic bags.

“I bet it was Mr. Tall, Dark, and headed for a coronary over there…” Holtzmann nods towards Paul.

Erin tries not to laugh, and ends up snorting.  As usual, this sends Abby into fits, and between giggles and half-formed sentences, she and Patty read the head manager for all he’s worth.  The tension of the last six hours eases.  The Homeland Security agent standing by them gives them a strange look.

Finally, with a last sigh, the Ghostbusters calm down.

“ _Huevos_.” Holtzmann mutters.

“So, ghost girls…I gotta ask.”  Patty shifts in her seat and looks just a little bit serious.  “Are…people attached to their remains?  If so, I gotta tell my uncle.  He’s good at what he does, man, but once—and y’all didn’t hear this from me—he dropped one old lady, one of the McNeely sisters.  Just—boom.  Face down on the floor.”

Abby nearly cracks up again, and Holtzmann is _delighted_.

“I’m serious!  I don’t wanna get a call from him next month, tellin’ me to get old Bertha outta his house.”

Erin answers while Abby’s preoccupied.  “There’s no real connection between ghost activity and remains.”

“Yeah, your uncle’s probably fine.  It’s the living he should watch out for.” Abby backs Erin up.  “Not to wax philosophical, but the most important thing on the other side is the trauma we take with us.  You know, our intentions.”

“So the late almost-Dr. Chen will go back to being dead, right?  Ghost busted?  McDonald’s time?” Holtzmann asks.

“If that was all she came back for, to tell people where she was.  I don’t know.  Who do I look like, Jennifer Love Hewitt?”

“In the right light.”

Just then, Erin glances at the mirror.

It’s gold-framed, art deco, one placed there to fill empty wall space and let guests give themselves a look-over before heading out into the Square.  And it’s fixated across from the Ghostbusters (giving Erin a good view of all of them).  She glances up, and at first she doesn’t register anything’s wrong.  She sees a lot of people in the lobby—nothing out of place there.  By the time Erin realizes there’s a fifth person among them (with long black hair), she’s glanced back, and it’s gone.

Oh, she knows what she saw.  She knows the implications.  Erin sits up straight, grabs hold of the nearest Ghostbuster, and keeps watching the mirror.

There—again—she sees it.  As she looks away, the shape of another person.  Very weak ghosts (Class 1 entities, semi-anchored) make themselves known via sympathetic resonance—an atmospheric phenomena much like ultrasound.  Affected people are able to see it, but only sporadically, usually out of the corners of their eyes.

Without prompting, Abby takes out the PKE meter.  She starts getting readings barely above the spirit-threshold.

“…Something’s wrong.” Erin says, suddenly sure.  “Our jobs are never this easy.  It takes a lot of energy to break through the barrier, I think something else is up.”

The PKE meter gives a little jolt in Abby’s hand.  Erin thinks (she can’t be sure, but she _thinks_ ) she sees the figure in the mirror nod.  Then Erin blinks, and can’t seem to find the figure again.

“Four days of CSI: Long Island was _easy_?” Holtzmann moans.

“I’m with Holtzy.” Patty says.  “We found the body, figured out who killed her, sat through two more hours of interviews—“

“Yeah, do they have to interview us every time we kill someone?”

“—What else could she be tellin’ us?”

“Not that there was much _telling_ to begin with.  What the three of you saw, the creeping psych symptoms…Would’ve been a whole lot easier if she just called the front desk with, ‘I worked with Rowan and then he killed me, check the furnace’.” Abby gripes.

“I dunno, Abby, remember that civil war dude?  In the Moore Museum, with the bullet in his heart?  Class 1.206-something or other…”

“Yeah, gave customers chest pains.”

“Couldn’t do much else.  Our girl was sick, Abby, maybe she’s doin’ the best she can.”

“Now you’re Jennifer Love Hewitt.”

“Don’t go callin’ names, now.”

“Well, either way, _this_ isn’t helping.”  Abby turns off and stows the PKE meter.  “I vote we call it a day.  Maybe hit up a Mickey D’s, I know Holtzmann wants some nuggets…”

“Actually…”

Holtzmann has the beginnings of a very dastardly grin on her face.

She leans in and steeples her fingers.  “I’ve been meaning to whip out this plan for a while.  Buckle yourselves in, ladies, it’s a wild one.”

“Now I’m really terrified.” Patty says.

“I’d never even _suggest_ this under normal circumstances, but as we’ve all seen today…these are not _normal circumstances_.  _I_ propose…we scrap together some sort of miniature cyclotron, give it _just_ enough juice to attract and pull that ghost to our side, and see what happens.”

No one has to say out loud—“see what happens” is never a good idea with nuclear physics.  After a moment, Holtzmann’s plan sinks in, and their corner of the lobby becomes a mess of overlapping voices and scientific discussion.

“You’re suggesting we put a ghost-ionizing machine in the middle of a bad-ghost cesspool?”

“A little machine.”

“Not to mention the one ghost that would be _least_ happy to see us—“

“It’s doable.  We’ve practically got blueprints—“

“Have you seen Insidious 2?!”

“If there’s something we need to know—“

“I can’t imagine anythin’ we need to know THAT bad.  We’re like—we’re like exterminators, right?  This is like exterminators goin’ to a place with one rat, and givin’ that rat vitamins.  No, it’s like goin’ to a place with one rat, and opening up a hole into the evil rat dimension so any ol’ rat can come through.”

“It could weaken the barrier—would the risks be worth it?”

“Look.  Look, look, look.” Abby says, putting her hands out to stop that whole mess.  “Let’s just get out of here.  Homeland security can find someone else to hold down these chairs.  We’re done here.”

Dr. Abby Yates stands up.  And, just as she does—

_BANG._

Glass skitters along the floor.  Everything stops, even the CSI workers carrying out black bags.  A shard slides and hits one’s shoe, reflecting the ceiling above.  Erin nearly falls out of her seat.

The mirror’s frame (busted; nothing more than painted wood) sticks up at odd angles from where it fell.  No one was hurt—it just fell off the wall.  Inexplicably.  At just the right moment.

“…We’ll see what we can do.” Abby tells the air—a full opinion 180.

As the Ghostbusters grab their packs and run (Holtzmann leading the charge, yelling “WE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! DON’T BILL US!” into the stunned crowd), the Homeland Security agent sent to guard them is frozen.  The Ghostbusters leave quickly as they came.


	10. T h e  M a c h i n e

The device sits on Holtzmann’s favorite worktable.  It looks innocent enough, and even has warning stickers plastered to its casing.  (The Ghostbusters figure Holtzmann just puts those on to ignore them.)  It’s the size of a hat box.  And it’s one of the most dangerous machines in the whole firehouse.

“Abbs and I scrapped this together from the designs Homeland faxed us.  You should see this baby now.” Holtzmann addresses the gathered Ghostbusters.  “Put in a chro-O-mium hull, rrrrrefined the circular-accelerator’s krytron systems, touched up the radioisotope checksource just a _kiss_ , just a lil’ _smooch_ …and made it so it won’t blow up.”

Patty (who has personal experience nearly being blown up) says, from the bottom of her heart, “Thank you.”

“Not only that, check it out—you know how different ghosts luminesce at different frequencies?  They glow either blue or green or somethin’ in between?  Well, we thought up something genius.”

Then Abby steps in.  “Mm-hmm, this has a _targeted ionization effect_.  It’ll bring back only the ghosts that resonate at the frequency we aim for.  Thanks to Holtz’s data-gathering devices, we know what frequencies to aim for.  It’s not totally safe, but it’s better than a Ouija board.”

“Jesus…it took a year-somethin’ just to _make_ that garbage.  How long did _this_ take?” Patty asks.

“…It took two hours.  Then I played Overwatch, and Abby took a nap.”

“I am… _so_ glad none of us went evil, guys, I’m _so_ glad.” Erin says.

“Buy us cheesesteaks and we’re even.” Abby says.  She’s probably not kidding.

“Later, y’all.” Patty claps her hands.  “It’s time to suit up.”

***

Getting into the Mercado is simple enough.  The night security guard doesn’t bat an eyelash at them.  Neither does the receptionist on duty.  It’s late—past prime check-in hours—and the CSI team has swept out of the building.  Despite staff efforts (and later, a TV appearance by Assistant Mayor Lynch), a lot of guests probably checked out early.  Even in the heart of the city that never sleeps, the Mercado seems abandoned.

There’s no protocol for what they’re about to do.  With little ceremony, the Ghostbusters head right for the basement door…only to find it locked.

“Shoot…” Erin examines the paper plastered over the door and doorjamb, printed with a lot of official-sounding words, all meaning _do not enter_.  “This is still a crime scene.  What do we do now?”

While they talk amongst themselves, no one having an answer, someone pushes by them and calmly goes for the lock.

Everyone freezes.  It’s not Luis, or Cameron.  It’s Paul—there way past the end of his shift, looking paler and ten years older than they last saw him.

“…what in the sweet hell…?” Patty mutters.

Once Paul is finished with the card-lock, he addresses the Ghostbusters.  “You, ah—you ladies needed in the basement?”

He’s not meeting their eyes.  He’s sans fancy jacket, and looks kind of a mess.  In fact, he almost looks…God forbid… _humble_ in their presence.

“What the hell happened to you?” Abby asks.

Paul looks startled at that.  Seems the question hit a nerve.

“Look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Holtzmann can’t resist saying.

The head manager looks like he’s arguing with himself, not sure if he should tell them anything at all.  Finally, he breaks down.

“I…listen, I’m not saying I believe in this—this whole business.  But let’s suspend disbelief, here, and say I was up on the second floor…doing some anger management.  Venting…maybe waving around a spare pipe, I don’t know.  I challenged your ghost, and suddenly there were these things crawling out of the vents.  Maybe I swung at one!  It’s hard to remember.”

“You totally did.  Please, continue.” Abby says.

“I-I was saying some things…maybe not smart, in hindsight…and…”

Paul simply rolls up his sleeve, revealing four parallel scratch marks running down his arm.  From human nails.  Not serious, not even needing band-aids, but clearly enough to frighten the head manager.  They’d frighten the Ghostbusters, too—only they knew how abusive Paul could be (and half of them wanted to fight Paul too).

“So.”  He clears his throat and fixes his shirt-sleeve, back to proper behavior.  “Whatever you’re doing in my hotel…for the _third_ time…I only ask you don’t disturb the guests.”

“No promises.” Holtzmann says.

“We’ll—we’ll try.  Just keep the first two floors clear.  Might be something nasty coming up from the basement in the next few minutes, we don’t know.” Abby says.

“You got it.” Paul says, almost ruefully.  He turns back around and uses his key-card to break the paper seal.

“I don’t think we should do that!” Erin calls.

“Ah, those government bozos are just gonna leave it there for two weeks and then tell us to scrub it off.” Paul grumbles.  “I’ve been through this song and dance before.  With the last corpse.”  He swings open the basement door for them.

***

The small furnace room is almost crowded, and everyone knows it’s a tactical _nightmare_.  Tensions run high.  Everyone stares at the device in the center of the floor.

Oh, they’re ready for something bad to come through—proton guns drawn, ghost trap on a hair trigger—but they’re in a small concrete box.  About to energize whatever spirit is in the vicinity.  It’s a dumb idea, to say the least.  A real “could’ve had a V8” moment.

 But when Abby takes a breath and asks if they’re all ready, Erin remembers Anastasia Chen’s face in the mirror, how scared she was in the video…Erin doesn’t hesitate.

“Let’s do this.”

Holtz crouches down and turns it on.

At first, nothing happens.  There’s no sparking or fire hazard to this model—just a series of hums and some blue lights, reflected off the bare walls.  Holtzmann reaches over and turns on the furnace, too, for reasons no one can fathom.  The sound of distant rattling pipes echoes from the ancient thing.  Abby’s looking down at the PKE meter.  Patty’s watching intently for any ghost signs.  At first, nothing happens.

Then there’s a change in the air.  It’s like an APX shift, or an airplane pressurizing, only more visceral (like the beginnings of a mental breakdown).  That nagging feeling of dissociation flares up in everyone’s mind.  Sound changes.  The small light in the furnace flickers.

Still, nothing happens…

Then, it’s like the world explodes.

Abby’s instruments beep furiously.  Green shoots from the furnace.  Holtzmann’s the nearest—she can feel the heat from where she stands.  There’s screaming, and the door rattling, and things crawling around the room just out of sight.  No one knows where to shoot.  Holtzmann swallows her fear and grabs the burning metal, pulling the ancient furnace door straight _up_.

Instead of the agonizing scrape, it _shoots_ up with a BANG.  A rush of air and heat flows out.  The Ghostbusters feel it milliseconds before a burst of color and motion falls out onto the concrete floor.

It’s beyond proton-stream range before the Ghostbusters can even react.

“ _Follow it_!” Erin screams.

Patty has the good sense to scoop up the cyclotron and thrust it into Holtzmann’s arms.  Holtzmann also grabs the waiting ghost trap by its cord.  They’re probably gonna need that.

In the hallway, they barely catch a glimpse of the ghost materializing.  It’s a humanoid figure, wrapped in sheets of flickering green.  As the first women out of the furnace room stop and level their proton guns, the figure seems to…look around.  Suddenly it’s gone again, a flicker of movement disappearing around a corner.

“Why can’t they just stay put?!” Erin laments.

“Try doin’ this for 25 floors!” Patty says, booking it past her.

The ghost flickers out and manifests for only a few seconds, just to look around.  The Ghostbusters are lucky to catch glimpses of where it’s gone.  Down the hallway, around another corner—and into the worst room possible.

Abby cries, “Don’t let her go up the stairs!”, but that isn’t necessary.

With a _bang_ , the doors to Rowan’s room fly open on their own.  As the Ghostbusters race in, three of them are ready to fire, ready to stop the ghost from reaching the exact intersection of the ley lines.  (Holtzmann frantically stuffs the turned-off cyclotron into her bag.)  That’s not where the ghost goes.

It appears around the room, quick as a thought.  Fragments of words (in English and Mandarin) appear in the Ghostbuster’s heads.  No one actually hears the ghost stay anything.  The words are more in their minds (appearing easily as their own thoughts) than in the air.

_different different  where  am  i_

The Ghostbusters fall into formation.  Someone would’ve fired, if they could pin the ghost down!

Suddenly, green streaks past them, going for the open doors.

There’s a moment—a breath-caught-in-your-throat moment, where Erin has a clear shot, but only half a second to take it.  Instead, she gasps in air…and calls the ghost’s name.

It stops.  Everything stops.  It— _she_ —is manifested fully, a complete human figure standing before them.  Anastasia Nántai Chen.  She looks so much like she did in her video…only it’s clear she’s long dead.

Her hair and clothes move constantly, caught in drafts no one else can feel.  Bits of her ghost break off, swirl around her, and remanifest; a constant cycle of burning and reatomization.  A light like a flickering candle shines through her incorporeal ribcage.  She turns around and sees the Ghostbusters, but doesn’t look surprised.  (She’s been seeing them for a while.)  The only hints of blue on her are the dark circles around her eyes, the tinge to her lips, and the ligature marks around her neck, like Erin saw.  She regards the Ghostbusters with eyes like burning coal.

“That’s not…that’s not my name.” the ghost says.  “Everyone calls me Nán.”

Her voice (or maybe her thoughts) jump from place to place now, coming from inside their heads and different points in the room.

“ _My mother loved the dramatic names._..” Her voice says, from a dark left corner of the room.

 _Remember when she got into that Phantom of the Opera phase, Amy?  After Dad died?_   From the right.

 _Such a bad movie…_   from somewhere indistinguishable.

She appears behind them, walking around, looking for something in the empty space…like a person.  The Ghostbusters lower their proton guns.  Abby and Erin look at each other; delightfully bewildered, cautiously optimistic.

“Okay.  Okay, this is good.” Erin says, more to Abby than the ghost.  “Line of dialogue…finally, one of them _listens_ to us, instead of—of _sliming_ me.”

Patty tries out the name.  “Nan. Nán—goes up at the end, right?”

“Like a question.” Nán says in a small voice—all of her is confused and relieved, that someone is even asking, that someone cares to pronounce it right.  (The flat affect most people use makes the word into the Chinese word for ‘man’.)

“Al’ight, Nán…I gotta know.  How did you end up…here?”

Nan seems to whisper the word “here…”.  Similar whispers sound from the dark crannies of the room—little chittering voices, almost covered by the rasping of wings. 

_hEre_

_here_

_h er e???_

Then Nan flickers out.

That oppressive brain-weird feeling descends again (pervasive, but not so severe).  The Ghostbusters scan the room.  (Does it seem darker…?)  Abby’s whipped out the PKE meter, but like before, it isn’t giving a consistent reading—the ghost is everywhere and nowhere.  In looking for her, Erin spots something odd on a desk.  She’s certain it wasn’t there when they walked in.

It’s a chess set.  Erin calls the others’ attention to it.  Nothing special—it looks like someone left it in the basement by accident, halfway through a game.  But there’s something odd about it…like Erin’s eyes aren’t quite picking it up.  She can’t quite comprehend where each of the pieces are, and when she moves towards it, the image doesn’t line up with her motion.  Like an optical illusion.  It’s not really there.  Erin sees Abby adjusting her glasses, over and over, and knows the effect is universal.

“Guys, do you feel that?  Are you seeing things?” Erin addresses the others.  “This is how she was communicating with people, the whole time.”

A faint voice in their heads speaks.

_it’s    the    only    way   i    know   how ._

Then, a slight pause.

_…and everyone’s been little bitches about it.  Try LIVING it for ten years._

Abby shrugs at that, with an ‘I guess so’ look on her face.

“I’ve been screaming for…it feels like, years.  No one was hearing me.” A more substantial voice says.

“We’re hearing you _now_.  Tell us what happened to you.”

Erin reaches out to touch the chessboard—and just for a second, the Ghostbusters aren’t in the basement anymore.  They’re not alone, either.

There’s trees and a daylight skyline all around.  The air feels crisp, there’s even a breeze.  The words “B R Y A N T  P A R K” appear in everyone’s mind.  No context, just disjointed letters.  Nan—alive, smiling up at Erin in a kind of strained way—reaches across the desk to move a piece…and the image changes.

The basement is pitch-dark.  The air’s deathly still, and suddenly, a lot colder.  Cold enough to numb fingers and noses.  They might as well be standing outside.

_Click._

There’s suddenly a light that shines across their faces, seeking them out one by one.  Clouds they’re breathing out light up white.  It comes from the left of the desk, nearly blinding the closest person—Erin—who shields her eyes.  It moves on to Abby, and sweeps just as quickly to Holtzmann, then Patty…

“Let’s go…” a voice (an implacable voice) says.  “The hour is late.”

The flashlight beam swings away; the darkness and the cold all suddenly lift.  The normal fluorescent half-lighting of the basement room comes back up.  The background sounds of the hotel, like the humming of the air ducts and rattling of pipes comes back—the Ghostbusters didn’t realize those were gone.  They breathe, and get their bearings, subconsciously moving closer towards each other.

“I would have died if I didn’t come here.”

Nán’s back, standing where she disappeared from.  She’s more… _together_ than they’ve seen her yet.

“Please, believe me, it was so cold.  I didn’t know what would happen.  I didn’t know what North was planning…”

She seems to follow that line of thought, and trails off.  It’s like she doesn’t see the Ghostbusters anymore.  Her face goes from apologetic, to confused, to terrified—then with a flicker, she’s back to the blank stare from before, and vanishes.

Once again, Nán appears around the room—fractured bits of a ghost.  (None of the Ghostbusters’ instruments could pick up a consistent signal because she’s never _whole_.)  She can’t wrap her thoughts around how the room became so barren, it was just—it was just—she was _just_ in this room, it wasn’t scraped clean—

This time she pulls herself together a lot quicker.  She slows down and stops, finally, in front of the little nook with the mattress-less cot.

“Hey, hey!  Stay with us, Nan.” Abby says.  The ghost turns her head.  “I figured this bit out: you lived in the hotel, didn’t you?  Probably in empty rooms!  God knows, management wouldn’t notice…The rest of the staff thought you were a ghost!  _Hah!_ ”

Nán almost smiles.  The room changes again.

Possessed Abby drags Holtzmann to the window, about to throw her to the pavement outside.  _“Look at the view!”_

 _“Look at the view…”_   Nán watches Times Square through a 20th-floor window, someone standing right behind her.

“It was easy…” Nán says, back in the basement room.  “It was easy…and a little fun.  Sticking it to the man, and all.”

(She’d taken one liberal arts class in college, and imagined herself a rebel.)

“And you—you did calculations.  Research.  Worked on some machines, didn’t you?” Erin continues.

Nán’s countenance darkens a little bit.

“…I didn’t know…what we were building.  I was safe for once, I didn’t ask—“

                                                     “It was all theoretical—“

“Ghosts aren’t real, _ghosts aren’t real_ —“

The chemist shakes her head, and the voices abruptly stop.

“…I have some bad news.” Holtzmann says—only shutting up when Patty elbows her and Abby shoots her a look.

Meanwhile, Nán seems lost in thought.  Green dragonflies—looking at first like wavering bits of the ghost’s own aura—crawl from out of sight over her shoulders.  They move in a jerky fashion.  One ventures down to her hand.  It chews on her flesh there.

They seem very…sharp.

“The work kept me together, I—“

In an instant she shakes off the creature and appears curled-up, on the empty bedframe.

“I couldn’t fall apart.  Don’t want to.  Can’t—

_fall—_

But my brain keeps shattering, no matter _what_ —…”

_Bang._

She’s gone.  The pieces of mirror remaining (in the wardrobe, and in the frame up above) come crashing to the floor.  There’s a symphony of glass on concrete.  No one’s hurt.  One fragment bounces close enough to Holtzmann that she can get a good look—it’s heat-warped.  By the empty frame up on the catwalk, Holtzmann can see Nán, pacing like she did in her video.

“I was a chemist before I fell apart!  I loved it!  I was _good_ at it.  I still love it…I don’t understand why I ended up here.”

“Acadamia’s the pits.” Holtz volunteers (casual as ever.)  Nán stops…and smiles.

“Yeah, we need to share stories sometime.  Guess you weren’t giving anyone orders, huh?”

Abby didn’t have to explain that question.  The ghost sees something in her mind—a memory of a CCTV video.  And a note.

Suddenly, a piece of paper floats down through the air, slipping back and forth as it falls.  Abby manages to catch it.  (A small miracle, given her performance in high school gym.)  It seems corporeal enough.  Scrawled on custom Aldridge Mansion stationary are the words, “Call me when you’re alone.  X-O”, and a phone number.  Gross.  As soon as Abby reads it, it fades away.

“Well, that answers that.” Abby says, remembering Rowan’s face in the video. “Who puts X’s and O’s on a note anymore?”

The ghost rolls her eyes.  It’s weird, to see a ghost roll her eyes.  “I _know_ , right?”

“Back on track, please—you kept…getting sick.  Do you remember how long you lived here?” Erin asks.

“…Christmas.  New Year’s.  A few weeks…after…”

Each woman feels it—that part of their brains that registers time malfunctioning.  One second lasts an hour, and the next, no time at all.  The Mercado is a liminal space.  There’s no time in its halls and rooms.  Time has no meaning.  Nán casts her gaze down from the catwalk, towards the center of the room.

In the falling dark, the Ghostbusters see the outline of that great and terrible machine, back where it was.  It’s almost finished.  Sparks (or maybe bugs) skitter underneath it.

“February!  Almost Chinese New Year.  I rememb—I remember—“

There’s a shock of fear that runs through the room.  It’s palpable, a tension in the air likely to snap.  Suddenly, the fluorescent lights flicker back on.  The room is full of stuff again, cluttered with papers and mirrors and janitorial supplies.  It’s exactly as it was when Rowan lived there.  It’s like he never left.  Like they’ve been standing in February 2016, and only then noticed it.  The Ghostbusters even have a moment to look around.

It’s quiet.  The only source of movement in the room draws the women's eyes.  Back, in the maze of desks and tables and half-finished machines, sits “Ghosts from our Past”.  Wavering dragonflies crawl the cover.  They flock to it, like they’re flies and it’s a rotting piece of meat.

Nán—the living image of her—wanders out from the nook.  She’s dressed in what she wore in the video.  What she died in.  She doesn’t see the Ghostbusters.  But she does see the dragonflies.  She wanders over and chases them away (one lingers to chew on the dust jacket).  There’s a moment where she might’ve walked away—but then she picks up the book, and the Ghostbusters hear her prayer.

_Allah, Jesus, ancestors, whoever’s up there—if this book has porn in it, please don’t let it be dead people…Or Asians._

The Ghostbusters watch her flip through it.  Her lips move as she reads the math to herself.  Recognition and horror bloom in her features…

Suddenly—

T H E  M A C H I N E.

Nán looks to the center of the ley lines, where a huge shape is covered by a dingy sheet.

_it cant be it cant be it was all theoretical—_

    (the projected output here lines up with Maxwell's second principle, upside down triangle means nabla, if the entity's within these parameters)

“Ta made niao, he’s actually building it...”

charge the lines create the vortex break the barrier charge the lines create the vortex break the barrier charge the

_THE MACHINE THE MACHINE THE MACHINE—_

The voices grow.  The rest of the room falls away.  Then it’s just Nán, standing before the half-finished thing.  She takes it in (the Ghostbusters can see all of it too).  The bones of it are there—he’s almost done.  And it’ll work.  She knows now, it’ll work.

In the stunned quiet, Patty takes a step towards the chemist.

“What happened then?  What did you do?” she asks softly.

“…I destroyed it.”

Another blink, another flicker, and Nán stands by a set of switches.  Her hands are smeared with grease, worn from hours of careful work.  Her eyes are wild and angry.  Nán reaches out, and flips a switch.

The basement explodes into light and noise.

Some of the women shield their faces on instinct; Holtzmann grabs onto Abby, Patty anchors herself with a desk.  In that moment, the danger is real.  It’s like the world is coming to an end.

Only one sound cuts through the chaos—an inhuman scream.

_“WHAT  HAVE  YOU  DONE?!”_

It’s terrible—like a mortally wounded animal.  And at the sound, the hallucination falls to pieces.

Images fly by at the speed of thought.  The lobby, the elevator, the halls.  Fragments of emotions hit them.  Each woman gets a taste of fear.  This isn’t like previous images—it’s human trauma, coupled with a supernatural ability.  Nán pulls herself together, and the vision ends (with a last disjointed look at the lobby floor rushing up).  It takes a little bit longer, but Nán pulls herself together.

Catching her breath, Abby groans, “I wish you’d stop doing that…”

“We—we saw that, we saw what you mean.” Erin manages to say.  “We saw the security video.  The world heard your call for help—“

“Can’t think about that.” Nán cuts her off.  Her voice has a harsh edge they haven’t heard yet.  She sounds angry, or maybe scared (often they’re one and the same).  “No, no, I can’t, I’ll fall apart, I—“

“Anastasia?  Nán?  You’ll be okay, I swear.” Patty says, just as insistent.

The ghost falls silent.

“We know somethin’ bad happened next…Someone put your body in the furnace.”

That phrase repeats in little voices like the rasp of wings—

_In the furnace,  in  the  furnace…_

Over and over.

The room slowly darkens, and there’s a chair in the middle of the room, and Nán, in front of a mirror swirling with another dimension trapped inside.  The shifting green is the only light in the room.  It’s silent.  There’s the smell of fried wiring, and a feeling of numb shock.

Nán raises her head.  She talks to dead air.

“Rowan, please…”

She lifts a hand to touch someone that isn’t there.  Then, suddenly, there’s a shared feeling of something tightening around one’s neck…

It only lasts a moment.  Even the image disappears.  Erin looks around, rubbing her neck.  Holtzmann pulls at her collar and Abby swallows hard.  Nán pulled them out of that scene through herculean effort alone; she stuffs the memory deep down, but still she’s fracturing…

“No, no, I can’t—“ her ghost insists.

“Can’t breathe—“                      

the center cannot hold the center cannot hold

_EVERYTHING’S        B U R N I N G !_

The sound of the furnace door slamming shut fills the room, louder than anyone can believe, and a terrible heat rises up.  It’s everywhere—suddenly the Ghostbusters are somewhere else entirely.  They’re in the middle of a firestorm.

The noise itself is deafening—cut through by bits of speech, bits of thoughts, everywhere, burning and fracturing.  Each woman is isolated where she stood.  Patty looks around, panicked, realizing walls of the storm separate her from the rest of her family. Holtzmann drops her gun and covers her head.  Erin can’t even see Abby—they were standing just a few feet apart.  But someone’s shouting above the din.

Barely—just _barely_ —Erin can hear Abby’s voice.  Abby’s calling their names.  She’s still there.  Erin dares to try and move in that direction, inching her way towards the sound of her best friend’s voice.  The psychic maelstrom seems to steal all oxygen from the air.  The walls are closing in—soon they’ll be overtaken…

Then a hand grabs Erin’s arm, and pulls her through.

Erin’s singed, but unharmed.  She hangs onto Abby like a lifeline (not caring she’s getting poked in the side by the corner of Abby’s proton pack.  Bigger problems, Erin figures.).  They take just a second to look at each other, say each other’s names in their shared relief, before Abby casts her gaze back out into the chaos.

Patty’s voice is just barely coming through.  Boldly, and without any thought for her own safety, Abby reaches out a hand and pushes towards the sound.

In the shifting colors and scorching heat, they find Patty, sheltering Holtzmann under her.  They pull the two into their pocket of air.  Almost on instinct, they take positions to protect one another—hanging onto each other in the middle of the firestorm.

It’s Patty’s voice that rises above the din.

“Ay!  _Listen to me_!” she screams out into the storm.

It’s barely cutting through the noise.

“We’re right here for you, listen to me!  You ain’t gonna fall apart!  This shit can’t get you anymore!  It can’t _touch_ you!”

The noise and the heat, they retreat the slightest bit.  Nan materializes at the edge of the firestorm, burning along with the room, looking terrified and helpless as the Ghostbusters.  Slowly, she looks up at Patty. 

“That’s right!  You don’t got to be afraid of it anymore!  You didn’t take it with you when you died.”

The firestorm slows, and slows, losing power as recognition crosses the ghost’s face.  Burning motes hang in the air.  It’s like time slows, too.

“…I am dead.  Aren’t I…”

It’s a statement.  Not a question.  She’s known this for a while—in the shattering, she just forgot.

“…I’m afraid so, baby.” Patty says, her voice gentle in the new stillness.

The room comes back.  The storm fades away altogether.  Burning motes turn to ash, hanging in the air of the basement, as the Ghostbusters start to make out corners and outlines of the room.  The chair Erin dragged up is still in its place.  (It’s the same one from the vision of Nán being garroted.)  The ghost sinks into it slowly, head in her hands.  The firestorm’s just replaced by a stillness…a terrible cold feeling.

Now, the Ghostbusters can move.  Holtzmann lets out a sigh and holsters her proton gun.  Abby wipes ash off her glasses.  Erin shares one last look with Patty, squeezes Abby’s arm one last time, and breaks from the group.

She can’t touch the ghost, not without some kind of ectoplasmic-interaction device.  So Erin places a hand on the back of the chair.

As the rest of the Ghostbusters join her, one by one, they can hear more little phrases around the room.  (Or maybe it’s just Nán talking quietly.)

“I thought I’d see Amy again, I thought I’d see my mom…”

                                           “I’ll never see my sister get married.  I wanted a house with a dog.”

                    “I’ll never get better.  I’ll never get better…

…He murdered me.”

The light around Nán’s form seems to draw in and intensify.  She’s shattering in a new way.

With a new urgency, Erin says, “You came back for something.  That took a lot of energy, Nán, what was it?”

Nán only curls up in the chair.

“What was it?” Erin repeats, trying to make her voice gentle as possible.

There’s little voices all around the room—sounds from the little insects crawling in the cracks.

_What was it?  What was it?_

And as Nán pulls all of herself together, she starts to remember.

The living creatures in the room get only the barest flashes.  Some law of the bigger universe, some great failsafe, prevents them from seeing.  Nán remembers the Other Side.

She remembers the cold, and the glass.  The Apocalypse, too—the fracture in the earth that spat her out and then sucked her back in.  On the Other Side, time passes differently.  On the Other Side, it’s been decades.

Pieces fall into place.  She remembers crawling her way back through the barrier, burning and fracturing, nearly losing herself, all because—all because—

She sits up with a start.

“ _He’s coming back_!”

The sound of her voice fills the empty concrete chamber; all at once, she’s up and moving with dire alarm.  Erin and Abby look at each other (twin terrified glances).

“Rowan’s coming back!  You don’t understand—there are things in the deepest levels of that dimension!  Ancient things!  Things that were never alive!  He’s bargained with them, and now he’s—now he’s got a way to rip a hole through from the other side!”

“How much time do we have?” Erin asked.  No hesitation, no questioning.  For once, someone believes Nán.

The ghost takes a second to think.  “I-I can’t be approximate.  Time behind the Barrier, it’s like playing Calvinball.  Hours, maybe a day.”

Hours.  The Ghostbusters can work with that.  One or two sighs of relief are heard.

“Oh, we whipped up the mini-cyclotron in less than _hours_.” Holtzmann says.

“If you build on your theories in chapter 12, I think it was—“

“We can find a way to strengthen the barrier!” Erin finishes.  “We’ve already got solid research on the atomic basis for the field—"

“Holo-lasers, we can use holo-lasers—”  Abby and Erin are already brainstorming.

“ _Finally_ , a mission where we don’t gotta kick ghost ass.” Patty says to herself.

Leaning on the chair (as much as a ghost can lean on something corporeal), Nán seems to smile.  It _worked_.  They _believed_ her.  Nán’s energy was waning—without the Ghostbuster’s little machine ionizing her, her energy was slowly slipping away.  She won’t be able to stay long.

It’s Holtzmann that elbows her coworkers.  “Hey, we should get going.  I double-parked up there.  Triple, actually.  It ain’t pretty.”

“We’re moving, we’re going…” Patty turns back to the ghost and notes she’s flickering out, becoming more and more transparent.  “Anything else you need to tell us?”

“Bring back the cute guy sometime.” The ghost says, without hesitation.  “I’ve been stuck in this basement for _ever_ with the death echo of a human Reddit thread.  I _need_ a change in scenery.”

“Are you talkin’ about the dog, or the Kevin?”

“Both.

(I love dogs)                          (that big, dumb, blonde guy is a snack though)

Bring both.”

“We’ll see.” Says Erin, just a tad jealous.

It’s a bit of an odd situation—the Ghostbusters have never really met a ghost they didn’t immediately trap.  They don’t really know what kind of parting words to leave with.

“Don’t scare the bejeezus out of any more people!  Bye!” is what Holtzmann contributes.  She left like she leaves every party—early, and with no social tact.

“Oh, yeah, we oughta go—” Abby picks up the bag Holtzmann forgot.  “Listen, you bought us hours.  In our business, that’s-that’s unheard of.  We’ll take it from here, don’t worry.  Leave it to the Ghostbusters!”

Holtzmann gives a “WOO!”, in the hall outside.

“Rest easy now, baby.  You did good.” Patty says softly.

Sharply aware her energy is waning, letting go of her grip on the corporeal world, Nán gives Patty a weary smile and thinks out loud.  “Yeah…my dad’s somewhere on the other side.  Somewhere nice, I bet.  I’d like to see him again…”

With another flicker, she’s gone—not altogether, but gone from sight.  There’s no brain-weird feeling hanging over them this time.  The Ghostbusters leave, talking about what they could do to hold the Barrier together, and who could patrol the next day (just in case).

The concrete rooms slowly falls silent.

Somewhere in the basement, static electricity gathers in the air.


	11. The Grid

For the first time in weeks, the basement of the Mercado takes on a benign stillness.  The infrasound buzzing quiets.  If any living thing ventured down there in the early hours of the morning, all they’d get is a hum at the back of their skull.  Nothing otherworldly crawls in the cracks of the foundation.  All the psychokinetic energy in the area had been spent.

Well, almost all of it.

Wisps of ionization drift in the air (emanating from where the mini-cyclotron was active for just a moment—a cosmic afterimage).  It’s just barely enough to tempt one spirit through the veil.  An ionization snack, if you will.

Manifestation takes much longer than usual.  Arcane energies from the deepest levels of the Other Side have to filter through the barrier, bringing one ghost ‘ambassador’ into the corporeal dimension bit by bit. 

No one is there to witness.  No one is there to stop it. 

With the remaining energy, it takes an hour, maybe an hour and a half.  (Once again—time is Calvinball.)  The end result is…almost back to normal.  Almost.

The apparition was in human form, but its skin took on a waxy, cloth-like texture.  Yellow light from its eyes scans over the room.  The remains of burns decorate the side of its face, and of course, its grin is filled with inhumanly sharp teeth.  This is Rowan North—or what used to be Rowan North—and it appears the afterlife was crueler than he imagined.  Faded gashes appear on his burnt cheek (a similar set cut through his uniform shoulder).  A gift from the late Gertrude Aldridge.  It turns out she doesn’t like being toyed with, no matter Rowan’s intentions.  She wasn’t the only ghost with a grudge Rowan ran across on the Other Side.

He isn’t eager to go back.

The class IV entity takes a minute to compose itself.  It’s been _so long_ since he was in the land of the living.  Even the faint air currents through him feel new.  “Feeling”—or the twice-removed parody of it that spirits have in this dimension—is almost a shock.  He imagines he can taste the air.  (Dust and mildew, that’s what it tastes like.  Not a great sensory experience.)  Feeling wasn’t something he wasn’t eager to go back to, either.

Death hurt.

It hurt more than Rowan imagined, ever calculated.  Adrenaline, shock, and the brain’s own natural failsafes…those were supposed to protect him from any pain.  A 20,000-volt arc, straight across the heart—an instant death.  The most he ever imagined he’d feel was consciousness slipping away.  It was supposed to be blissful.  Triumphant, even!  How long had he spent imagining it, just to get through the day?  Too long.

Death hurt.

In the moment, it seemed to last eons.  Rowan questioned why a human body was wired to feel so much pain…either a dire flaw in evolution’s design, or a punishment by some higher intelligence.  Rowan was never sure the electricity killed him.

On the physical plane, it was only hours before he reappeared to take his revenge.  On the Other Side, it took _months_.

The layout of the Mercado hasn’t changed much.  Honestly, he expected ruins—wasn’t the building in pieces last time he checked?  Oh, well.  Another interesting phenomena, a result of mixing dimensions.  At least he knows where everything is.

Moving through the pipes and wires, he ascends from the basement.  (Phone lines, lights, and CCTV screens flicker.  No one is there to notice.)  Rowan wastes no time.  He needs a host if he’s going to stay—someone to feed off, a meat-puppet to interact with the physical plane.  Any old body will do.  Imagine his surprise when he runs across a familiar face…

The lobby and second floor are nearly deserted.  Not even a custodian to be found.  The weathered manager is just finishing his rounds, making sure the area’s clear of humans.  It’s far later than he’s used to staying up, and it shows—in the way he walks, especially.  Hunched over, as if gravity’s acting twice as hard.  Paul’s plodding his way through the second-floor hallways, finally ready to call it a night.

The lights flicker.  That gets Paul’s attention.

He stops for a moment.  The furnace ghost didn’t mess with the lights…

“It’s an old building.” Paul says to himself…and keeps going.  He’s too tired to deal with this.

They flicker again, almost in response to that.

Paul only hesitates for a second.  A subdued sort of motivation takes him over—the leading edge of panic—and he tries to keep the same pace as before, secretly changing course.  He’s headed for the phone behind the reception desk.

He’s only half-convinced he needs to call the Ghostbusters.  It’s probably nothing.  He probably just needs to call the electrician…

That’s when the lights go out altogether.

Not just go out.  The bulbs burst in the expensive sconces, each a bright flash of blue before there’s nothing but darkness.  Paul stumbles, a hand on one wall to steady himself.  He doesn’t have time to shout “Who’s there?!” before there’s an eerily familiar voice.  It seems to be coming from all around him.

“ _Well, well—long time, no see_.”

A bit cliché, but Paul’s in no state of mind to point that out.  He’s gone from 0 to full-blown panic in 2.5 seconds.

“ _It seems the hotel’s back up and running_ —”

Speaking of—Paul’s taken off at full tilt, aiming for the sliver of light down the hallway.  The lobby.

“— _despite your continued presence_.”

Paul isn’t sure if he tripped, or something slammed him to the carpet.  (He’d never admit he tripped, anyway.)  Finding he’d only suffered minor rug burns, the manager clambered to his feet.

“ _Funny…I was SURE I killed you the first time.  You’d certainly earned your place, as a victim of the First Cataclysm, you cowardly waste of neurons…_ ”

“Rowan?” Paul asks.  Honestly, it’s just a guess—more than a few people, ghostly or not, would like to spook him.  Paul’s had a long career as Middle-Management Asshole.

In response, the ghost laughs.  It’s a chilling sound.

“ _Excellent, you’ve caught on!_ ”  He’s still not visible (preferring to play with his food).  “ _I thought you’d take longer, honestly.  You’re used to hearing my voice through a radio, aren’t you?  Simpering.  Bending to your every whim_ …”

Paul takes a few steps backwards, towards the exit.

“ _’Yes, sir.’  ‘Right away, sir.’…Not anymore_.”

Rowan’s ex-manager starts to stutter out a defense.  He only gets a syllable or two in before his eyes start to make out shifting blue patterns in the dark—the apparition becoming visible.  It’s the sharp smile that scares Paul.

“ _I think it’s your turn_.”

In an uncharacteristically wise move, Paul decides to run.

Rowan lets him.  His old manager’s fear is feeding his ego.  It’s been too long since Rowan inspired terror in lesser beings…it’s better entertainment than “the Exorcist” reruns, if he’s honest with himself.

Paul makes it pretty far—he dodges glass from an exploding lightbulb, and finds himself in the open air of the lobby.  He’d shout down to his nighttime staff to call the Ghostbusters, but he remembers at the last second, they’re gone.  He sent them home.  Like a college girl in a horror movie, he stumbles on the carpet trim and lands on tile.  (He’ll insist to his dying day that the ghost tripped him.)  Rowan isn’t far behind—with one spectral hand, he takes Paul by the neck, and drags him till the manager’s sitting up, back is pressed against the art-deco railing.

Of course, Paul struggles—he grabs at the hand on his throat, but just passes through it.  (It feels like there’s static electricity zipping up and down his nerves.)  He can breathe, but he’s sharply aware that at any minute, that can change.  When faced with an angry spirit, Paul falls back on the tricks that work on the Mercado’s owners.  He just starts talking.

“Hey—” he chokes out, holding his hands up in a surrendering pose.  “What—what is this about?  Is this about the names?”

Again, Paul’s just guessing.  Whatever he did was such ancient history, Paul can barely remember it.  (Rowan died four months ago.)  The ghost’s countenance darkens.

“ _Yes, that’s ONE of_ —"

“Because I didn’t mean it, you know?  It was just guy talk!  You know how us guys are—"

Rowan suddenly remembered a feeling from when he was alive.  It surfaced during every staff meeting, every call to the manager’s office…the feeling that he’d do _anything_ to make Paul stop talking.

Eventually, Paul’s explanation petered out into nothing, and he carefully watched the ghost’s face for a reaction.  To the manager’s relief, he recognized the placid customer-service smile that crossed Rowan’s face.

“ _Oh, I believe you_.”

Two things happened at once: the odd pressure on Paul’s throat disappeared, and the bolts mooring the railing in place snapped.  The metal pressing into Paul’s back disappeared.  That (expensive) section of railing fell—but Paul managed to shift his weight in time.  Driven by adrenaline, Paul scrambled to his feet and darted towards the staircase.

Just for _once_ , Rowan would like someone to fall off the second floor and die.

Paul was practically skipping steps as he made for the reception desk.  The sound of his expensive Derby shoes on marble was the only sound in the lobby.  He almost thought he was free…then he noticed blue light on the marble in front of him, brighter than even the lobby’s built-in lights.  It was reflecting something behind him.  Paul made the mistake of pausing and turning to see the apparition at the top of the stairs.

He gave Rowan just enough time to possess him.

***

The feeling was rather like getting hit by a truck.  Or…maybe that came from hitting the lobby floor.  (He hit a couple stairs on the way down, too.)

When Rowan first opened his corpse-puppet’s eyes, he was greeted by the sight of the lobby ceiling.  Humans have such a narrow means of vision.  It’ll take some getting used to.  He activates the right neurons, contracts some muscles, and manages to sit Paul up.  The sheer amount of sensory input is staggering—having a body is like a ghost’s equivalent of a Disney ride.  Somewhere, tucked deep inside his host’s brain, there’s a screaming voice.  That would be Paul himself, along for the ride.  Luckily, that’s easy to ignore.

“Paul” climbs unsteadily to his feet.  Just when Rowan thinks he’s got the hang of things, Paul’s adrenaline starts to wear off, and suddenly he’s feeling like a nearly-50-year-old man who just fell down a flight of marble stairs.  Rowan laughs in surprise (and hears a different voice come out.)  It’s been a while since he’s felt that.

“Okay, okay.  I’m serious now.” He says to himself, in the empty air of the lobby.  He’s got this.

He’s halfway to the real Paul’s office when suddenly, he’s on the floor again.

The shock nearly knocks him out of the body—he can’t interpret all the signals coming at him.  What happened?  Rowan starts doing an inventory check.  Legs?  They were fine a moment ago.  Balance?  No, no, that’s not it…

Oh, right.  _Breathing_.

Living beings _breathe_.

Taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide puts the meat-puppet back in business.  Rowan’s really got the hang of things this time.  He makes “Paul” stand up once more, and straightens his shirt.  He’s got things to do—and not much time.

In the opulent manager’s office, Rowan lays out his findings from the lost-and-found.  Of course, it’s not enough components, not _nearly_ enough…but that’s all right.  He knows where to get the rest.  And he has a skeleton key—Paul’s own digital passcard.  He puts on the official coat hanging from the back of Paul’s chair.  He even checks his appearance in an old brass mirror, running over the lines of encouragement he prescribed himself so long ago—he’s slipping into old routines.  Shoulders back, walking rather stiffly, he returns to the hotel, blueprints running through his mind.

***

The first room he slips into belongs to a businessman—passed out, with empty bottles from the minibar scattered on the bedside table.  It’s pitch dark and dead quiet.  The only charger-compatible outlets are by the sink, Rowan knows, and of course that’s where he finds a smartphone.  It’s a simple matter of going through a briefcase to find a highly-powered laptop, too.  Rowan leaves, already inspecting the lithium battery he pulled out of the Dell.  It’s a good start—but he needs quantity, not just quality.

How trusting these people are, he thinks—how naive.  They’re staying in the company of strangers.  Maybe 50 people have access to their rooms at all times.  They trust that their status as paying customers will keep them safe.  Well, come morning, they’ll have much bigger problems…

Room by room, floor by floor, it goes like that.

He’s very nearly stopped in 2419.  The suite.  He was very nearly done when his meat-puppet’s peripheral vision registered something.  Against the faint light of Times Square just beyond the curtains, a little figure sat up on the pull-out bed.  (One of two figures, the other one sleeping.)  Nothing but a child.

The girl was frozen, terrified, as twin yellow lights flickered over to her.  For just a second, neither of them moved.  Then, the silhouette of an adult raised a finger to his lips, and seemed to smile.  Luckily for her, she didn’t (couldn’t) raise the alarm.  She just watched the figure leave.

***

They were simple—even when one takes into account they were made in a matter of hours, with tools and materials scavenged from a commoner’s hotel.  But they’d have to do.

Much like the original, brilliant machine, they’d be drawing directly from New York City’s power grid.  And much like the mirror devices (on which the design was based), they weren’t very big.  In fact, they could easily be carried, say, to the roof of whatever neighboring building he chose.

It was the early hours of the morning…but it didn’t matter if the buildings neighboring the Mercado were open or not.  Almost everywhere in New York is connected by a series of tunnels—maintenance shafts, old M.T.A. service tunnels, networks of electric cables…the city is like a hive.  A giant rat’s nest.  Rowan has no trouble at all, getting to the next building over.  Or the next…

The crowds milling about under 100,000 square feet of dazzling LEDs is thousands strong (even at that hour).  It’s the city that never sleeps.  Thick cables run just under their feet, supplying 161 megawatts to the massive displays.  Ignoring the time, and the creeping cold, tourists watch the shifting colors.

All at once, the lights begin to flicker.


End file.
